Dreaming of What Comes Next
by Korora12
Summary: A collection of recursive fanfiction written for the story Dreaming of Sunshine by Silver Queen, often crossovers.
1. DoSxKingdom Hearts I

I died. Again. It's not really a big deal anymore, I've done it so many times it's become normal. Not that it doesn't hurt; death is still a permanent goodbye to everyone I know and love in that life, but it's also a fresh beginning filled with new chances. I've come to accept it graciously. Goodbyes are a part of life, after all.

I don't know how old I am anymore. Definitely at least a millennium. I've lost track, though, due in part to the fact that not every world I've lived used the same calendar. Still, by most standards I am very old. I've done a lot of things in my many lives; fought monsters, toppled governments, killed gods, saved worlds. I've been a lot of things too; a ninja, a mother, an alien, an elf. I even spent some time as an AI.

But while I may be older than dirt, I once again found myself in the body of an infant. My new name was Kikyo and I had a pair of wonderful parents. Less than a year later, I also had a baby sister named Kairi. I always enjoyed having siblings, they made the early years pass more easily and enjoyably, and Kairi was no exception in that regard. She and I spent our days exploring our hometown, Radiant Garden, a peaceful place with little to endanger a pair of young girls. It was a magical place, in a very literal sense. Magic was a well-established fact in this world, and most people knew a couple simple spells. For my fourth birthday, my dad began teaching me a spell to light the fire in the fireplace. Mom wanted to start me with something less dangerous, but I insisted. By the time we were both four our parents trusted us enough to let us wander the city, so long as we didn't stray too far from our grandma, our eternal supervisor. Life was peaceful and quiet for a time, like it sometimes was, but as usual it didn't last. When Kairi was five and I was six, Radiant Garden came under attack.

We were in the market with our grandma, getting ingredients for dinner, when it happened. A black mass appeared in front of a merchant stand, resembling the opening of a corridor that led straight into darkness. From the mass crawled forth a dozen small, black creatures with yellow eyes. The creatures stood hunched over, their disproportionately large heads low to the ground. Their short arms swung wildly beneath their body, each tipped with three sharp claws. The crowd stared silently for a moment, giving the creatures the chance to strike first. One of them leapt onto the nearest bystander, claws swinging and mouth snapping. Blood flew, but not as much as I expected. The creature seemed to be aiming for light flesh wounds. If I had to guess, I would have said it's goal was to hurt, not kill.

The moment I saw the corridor I had expected trouble, the attack only solidified that feeling. I grabbed Kairi and ran in the opposite direction. I glanced back at just the wrong moment and witnessed our grandmother trip and fall. She yelled at us to keep running, she told me to take care of my sister and keep her safe.

I hesitated, torn between making sure Kairi was safe and trying to save Grandma. A pair of the creatures approached her fallen form, and I made my decision. Scanning the area for a weapon, I found a loose piece of piping. Ordering Kairi to stay put, I grasped the metal pipe in both hands and charged. I hadn't exactly trained my body for combat, but I didn't let that stop me. The first swing caught one of the creatures under the jaw, knocking its head up and back. The follow-up blow to the chest pushed it off my grandma's back. I think she was saying something to me as she struggled to get up, but I was too focused on the fight to hear her.

I cast the one spell I knew as I swung at the second creature. A handful of sparks leapt from the end of the pipe as I smacked it across its eyes; it wasn't much, but it seemed to give it enough extra oomph to push the creature back. I swung again, not fast enough to hit either creature, but in a wide arc to keep them from approaching while Grandma rose to her feet. When she stood, I grabbed her arm and pulled her back towards Kairi. Unfortunately, Kairi's situation wasn't much better. Somehow, three of the creatures had snuck past me and surrounded her. I ran, but I was too late. The first creature moved to attack her, but the moment it touched her a blinding light appeared. When the light cleared and I could finally see again, Kairi and all three of her attackers had disappeared.

I saw red. I wasn't sure exactly what had happened to her, but I knew I had failed to keep my sister safe. I was pissed; mostly at myself, but also a fair bit at the creatures that had caused my failure. I turned back to Grandma. She froze when she saw Kairi under attack, and she hadn't moved since. Which was bad, because she was about to be attacked by the two creatures from before again.

She looked straight into my eyes. "Run!" she ordered in the firmest and angriest voice I had ever heard from her. I took a step towards her, but she shouted again. By then it was too late. Both creatures leapt at her simultaneously. To my surprise, however, I didn't get the expected splash of blood. Instead, my grandma's body began to fade from sight. A bright light shone from her chest, and what looked like the cartoonish depiction of a heart floated out and up. As her body disappeared, a cloud of darkness gathered around her heart. The cloud condensed and coalesced until the heart had vanished, and in its place was a new black creature, thin and cylindrical with stubby arms and a mushroom hat.

I had no choice, I turned and ran. The creatures moved fast, but they seemed more interested in attacking the closer bystanders than one small girl. Even so, I didn't get far. There were black corridors everywhere, with dark creatures continuously crawling through them. As I ran, the corridors began to pulse, expanding and contracting with every passing second. I was only a few feet from one when they simultaneously exploded, releasing a wave of darkness across the plaza. When I finally opened my eyes again, the sun was gone. I couldn't see more than five feet in front of me, even after my eyes adjusted. I felt cold; the air temperature had dropped, but there was more to it than that. The cold seemed to reach deep into my soul and wrap around my heart. Ever since I lived a life as a ninja, bending the shadows to my whim, I had considered myself a creature of darkness. The dark was supposed to be comforting and enveloping, guarding you from the rest of the world. But this darkness felt wrong, invasive, untempered, and demanding.

A shift in the wind was the only warning I got before one of the creatures leapt from the darkness. I swung wildly, grazing its cheek. The creature landed on the ground and silently slithered away. My grip on the pipe tightened in anger. I had hoped for a peaceful life, and that blind hope had cost me my grandma and sister. My body was weak and untrained; I was out of my league and it looked like my foolish hope was going to cost me my own life as well.

Maybe it would be easier if I gave in, I thought. Give up and start over with another life, where I wouldn't screw up so badly. My head swam, and what little vision I still had faded further. I shook my head; like hell I was going to just give up. There! I saw a vague shape in the darkness and swung. My pipe hit empty air and I stumbled to the ground. I gasped for breath as the darkness pressed down, suffocating me. I managed to prop myself up on my knees with my pipe. A creature slowly approached me. The last thing I saw before the darkness took me were its gleaming yellow eyes.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

When I next woke was less of an interesting question than where I next woke up, because it wasn't Radiant Garden. I was lying on the stairs leading up to a massive skyscraper covered in neon signs. Similarly tall buildings surrounded an open plaza, lighting up the night sky the way only a large city can.

I wasn't alone. I counted five others in the plaza. Two boys, one with red hair, the other with blue, lay nearby, rising to their feet. Three other men stood nearby, wearing thick black cloaks with the hoods down. One had an eye patch on a heavily scarred face, another had silver hair, and the last had incredibly long dreadlocks.

"Finally awake," Eyepatch called. "Took you long enough."

"Who the hell are you?" Redhead demanded as he found his footing. I was content to let others do the talking for now. Something felt off about the situation, but I couldn't tell what.

"You lash out with anger on instinct, even when you no longer feel it," Silver-hair answered. "It must be deeply ingrained in your behavior."

"What do you mean I no longer feel it?" Redhead replied.

"My name is Xemnas. I am a Nobody, as are the three of you."

"That's a rather rude thing to call someone," I said, finally speaking up.

"Nonetheless, it is what we are, little girl," Xemnas responded. "Nobodies like us are born when a creature of light loses their heart to darkness, but refuse to stop existing. The heart is corrupted, turned into a creature called a Heartless, while the body and soul continue without it. That is what you are now."

"A Heartless?" Blue-hair asked. "Are those the creatures that attacked the town?"

"Correct. Without a heart, Nobodies are unable to feel genuine emotion. We can mimic it, because we still remember what it felt like, but it is only an act."

I realized very quickly that he was telling the truth. That was what seemed off, I wasn't having any emotional responses to anything happening. No flash of happiness that I was still alive, nor any panic or fear over being confronted by strangers in a dark, unfamiliar city. It reminded me of falling in to the black, but it wasn't quite same. There was still something there, a gnawing emptiness and a drive to fill it. A part of me was missing, and all I could feel was an overwhelming desire to get it back.

"How do we fix it?" I asked. "How do we undo what's happened to us?"

"That's what we're here for," Eyepatch answered. "We're part of an organization trying to get everyone new hearts. Xemnas here is our boss, I'm Xigbar, and tall, dark, and quiet over there's Xaldin. And lucky for you three, we're recruiting."

"I'll join," Blue-hair said, almost before Xigbar finished speaking. "My name is Isa, and I'd like to join your organization."

Xemnas held up his hand and Isa's name appeared between them. The letters swirled around Isa's body until they screamed to a halt in a new order. "From now until you have a heart once more, you shall be known as Sa'ix. Welcome to Organization XIII" Xemnas turned to the two of us who remained. "Will you join us as well?"

"I don't make a habit of making deals without knowing all the terms," I replied. "How exactly do you plan on getting us all new hearts?"

"A fair question. There exists a place, deep within the Realm of Darkness, the home of the Heartless, called Kingdom Hearts. It is a gathering point for the hearts of all the worlds. We intend to mimic this place here, above this city. When a Heartless is destroyed and a heart is unlocked, it will go to our new Kingdom Hearts, and when we have gathered enough, we will use them as materials to create our own, new hearts."

"That sounds good to me," Redhead said, and he stepped forward to receive his new name, Axel.

I almost joined him. I came so close; anything to fill that emptiness. But then I remembered. I remembered the type of person I used to be, the type of person I wanted to go back to being. I knew that if I ever succeeded at getting my heart back, but it came at the cost of thousands of other people's hearts, I would hate myself. That's not what I wanted to spend the rest of eternity feeling.

"The gathered hearts that you'll use as materials, they'll be destroyed in the process, won't they?" I asked, hoping against hope that they wouldn't be. That I could join this group and not have to worry about an angry conscience down the line.

"Yes, they will be," Xemnas responded.

"Then no deal," I said, though it was hard. "I wouldn't be able to live with myself if it came at the cost of so many others."

I turned to leave, only to find my path blocked as a spear flew through the air and landed in my path. I turned back to the Organization members, and saw two spears identical to the thrown one in Xaldin's hands.

Baggy clothes or no, there was no way he had brought three spears with without me noticing. "How did you do that?" I asked.

"Nobodies can barely be said to exist," he answered, finally breaking his silence. "For that reason we are born with weapons, because we must fight for what little existence we still cling to. My spears are as much a part of me as my arms." He approached until he was within arm's reach. "Few people your age would have the strength of heart to hold onto their shape upon becoming Nobodies. Those who do would cower, but you hold yourself like a warrior. Join us, and we'll teach you how to fight."

From the way he described it, it sounded like his weapon was a part of his soul. While he spoke I did some quick soul-searching, to see what was left after my heart had disappeared. Aside from the gnawing emptiness, I found a desire to survive and a will to fight. I called on that, reaching for it and drawing it out until I could feel it in the palm of my hand. "I said no." I swung my new weapon, a metal club resembling nothing more than a baseball bat, and connected with his hip. The moment it struck, it exploded. It reminded me of the time that I strapped C4 to a 2x4, except my bat survived the explosion, and I didn't end up with shrapnel and second-degree burns all along my arm. Xaldin wasn't so lucky; the explosion sent him flying out of my way, and I took the opening to run. Blood pounded in my ears as I headed for a nearby alley, but I still managed to hear Xemnas speak behind me.

"Leave her," he said. "She'll make her way back to us eventually. One way or another."

Not putting any faith in his words, I kept running until my legs burned and I could no longer breathe. Yellow eyes peered at me from dark corners, but nothing attacked me. A plan began to form in my mind as I moved. Xemnas had mentioned a place the Heartless called home, the Realm of Darkness. If my Heartless was anywhere, it was probably there. If I could get there and find it, I could probably figure out a way to take back my heart. It couldn't be too hard, right?


	2. DoSxKingdom Hearts II

The Realm of Darkness got a little boring after the first few years.

I quickly found that fighting wasn't the only part of being a Nobody that was instinctual. I was able to summon portals to the Realm of Darkness, like the ones that brought the Heartless to my home. I passed through one, and ended up in the middle of a twisted, ancient forest.

The Realm of Darkness was a place of perpetual nighttime, with light sources scattered about in various forms ranging from bioluminescent plants to city lights, depending on the region. Some areas were completely pitch black, and I learned to avoid those areas pretty quickly. Even the lit areas proved dangerous, however. Heartless of all shapes and sizes crawled in every corner of the Realm. Most tended to leave me alone as long as I left them alone, but occasionally I'd accidentally tick one off and get swarmed by every Heartless in a mile-radius. Necessity and survival instincts made me really strong, really fast. I got pretty good at blowing stuff up with magic.

All of my energy that wasn't devoted to survival was spent searching for my Heartless, following vague instincts and urges all across the realm. Unfortunately, survival ended up taking more energy than I'd expected. Heart or no heart, my body still required sustenance as it grew. Food was scarce, and more than once I had to choose between following my heart, and following my stomach. Most of the time I foraged in forests; the fruits would appear twisted and rotten, and left foul aftertastes, but they didn't kill me. There were no animals in the Realm of Darkness, only Heartless, so meat was hard to come by. Fruits, grains and nuts alone wasn't exactly an optimal diet for a growing girl, so it was beneficial to look for cities to raid. The cities never had people in them, but there were always signs of their existence. Fully stocked larders and grocery stores, locked doors and made beds. Fresh food never lasted long, and there was no electricity to power the fridges and freezers, but I managed to add jerky and salted meats to my diet on occasion. After a year I began outgrowing my clothes and had to take new ones. With all my trekking through wilderness, sturdy shoes that fit became almost as valuable as food.

For around five years I travelled the realm alone, with only my bat and my magic as company. Then one day, while searching a ruined a castle for food, I came across a human. The first thing I noticed about her was her smell. I had discovered, not long after first entering this realm, that darkness had a unique scent. It was everywhere in the realm, and so I soon learned to ignore it, but like the sudden silence after the AC cuts off, it was noticeable in its absence. The human I met smelled nothing like the darkness that suffused the realm; if anything, I would have said she smelled like light. A beacon of light in the dark.

She introduced herself as Aqua.

"My name is Kikyo," I replied. "You're the first human I've seen in years. I assumed only Heartless lived here."

"I'm stuck here," she answered. "I've been looking for a way out for a few years now. I take it you're trapped too?"

"Actually, I'm here hunting a specific Heartless."

"A little kid like you? You have some kind of vendetta against it?"

I considered telling her the truth, but I wasn't sure how she'd take it. Nobodies weren't supposed to exist, and she had to be strong to have kept her heart for so long in the Realm of Darkness. If she decided to fight me, I had no idea how it would go. I decided it was better to give her an easy lie than an uncomfortable truth. "Yeah, it attacked and destroyed my town."

"Well," she said, "I'm not usually one to support revenge, but if it will set your heart at ease, I'll help you out."

Her offer was unexpected. "Are you sure? I thought you were looking for a way out."

"Yeah, but I'm not really sure how to do that. I've mostly just been wandering around, trying to survive. I wouldn't mind if we were to wander around together for a while. It'd be a lot safer, and it'd be nice to have company."

I considered her offer. A bright heart like hers would undoubtedly attract Heartless in droves. On the one hand, that would mean more fighting, but on the other, it might serve to draw in my Heartless. "Sure," I said, "I'll accept your company." She would make good bait.

"Then it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Kikyo." As we grabbed our newly gathered supplies and headed out of the castle, Aqua struck up a conversation. "So, this Heartless we're looking for. What does it look like?"

"I don't know," I answered.

"You don't know? Then how will you know when we find it?"

That was a question I had asked myself before. It was my heart, I reasoned. "I'll recognize it when I see it." I couldn't feel hopeful without a heart, but there was still something in my chest. A shadow of a memory of an emotion. I knew I had to recognize if I saw it, because the alternative was wandering in the darkness forever.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Without a rising and setting sun to mark the passing of time, we walked for as long as we could and slept when we were tired. My theory that Aqua would draw in Heartless was proven correct on the first day, when we fought a swarm of small ones at the castle gates.

Aqua summoned her weapon. It looked like… "A giant key?" I was pretty sure I wasn't supposed to be able to feel incredulity, but somehow that was so unexpected it caused my nonexistent heart to react.

"It's called the Keyblade," she said as she swung it. It seemed effective, tearing through Heartless like they were nothing.

"Why'd you make a sword shaped like a key?" I asked, smacking a Heartless into smoke with my bat. "That seems a little ridiculous."

She seemed offended by that. "It's an ancient weapon passed down through generations of wielders, capable of unlocking the hearts of men and of worlds. It's the greatest weapon in all the worlds, capable of defeating any enemy."

"Huh," I said. "I usually just blow my enemies up." I waved my hand and did just that.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

We fought two more times before finding a place to sleep. We came across a small cabin in the woods, abandoned like every other building, and settled in. I set up my bedroll and prepared to sleep.

"Aren't you going to set up some defenses?" Aqua asked.

I opened my eyes. "Defenses?"

"Yeah, something to keep the Heartless away while we sleep. How have you lasted this long without doing that?"

I hesitated. The Heartless rarely bothered me while I slept. "I'm a light sleeper." Not actually a lie, I was, in fact, a light sleeper, but not entirely the truth, either. I snapped my fingers and a ring of glowing mines surrounded the cabin. "Careful, they're explosive."

Aqua rolled her eyes and stabbed her Keyblade into the center of the room. A hemispherical barrier appeared around the cabin, just inside the radius of my mines. "I really hope none of those go off tonight," she said. A few hours later, one of the mines went off.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Time passed and we traveled together, from desert to lake to city and back.

"Where are you from?" Aqua asked one day as we sat to eat.

"Radiant Garden."

"Oh!" She perked up. "I've been there. It's a beautiful city."

"It was," I agreed.

Her mood soured. "That's right. You said your home was destroyed."

I nodded. "Heartless attacked and pulled it into darkness. I'm probably the only to survive." Not that you could really call my false mimicry of existence "surviving".

She shook her head. "When I was there, I met an amazing little girl with a heart full of light. Something seemed special about her, so I cast a protective spell on her. That spell should have saved her from the attack. I know it isn't much, but you're probably not the only survivor."

"A protective spell, huh?" I could have used something like that. Maybe I wouldn't have become a Nobody if I had. "What was the girl's name?" I didn't have any interest in the answer, but Aqua liked it when I kept conversations going. I figured it was best to keep my bait happy, so she would keep following me.

"Her name was Kairi."

My heart skipped a beat. Not my metaphysical heart, I still didn't have one of those, but the physical organ in my chest that was pumping blood around. I wasn't sure why, but it seemed notable. "Short, red hair, blue eyes, and the sweetest little girl you ever met?"

"That was her. Did you know her?"

I faked a smile. "She's my sister."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"How big is this realm?" I asked once.

"I don't know," she answered. "Once I picked a direction and walked a straight line for as long as I could."

"What happened?"

"After about a month, I hit an ocean."

"Did you try crossing it?"

"No. I walked along the coast for a while, to make sure it wasn't just a really big lake, but I eventually gave up and turned back."

"Huh. If we ever come across it, we should build a raft."

Aqua chuckled. "Wouldn't that be a site to see."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The Heartless disappeared in haze of smoke and shadow. It had been an annoying fight; it wasn't particularly strong, but it spat out globs of sticky goo that trapped us in place, and was extremely resistant to magic. I took a good look at Aqua's shoulder-length hair, now covered in goo. "I think we're going to have to cut it off," I told her.

She sighed. "That's okay. I prefer short hair anyway. Just promise me you won't burn it off like you did yours."

"Hey," I said, unconsciously running my hand through the charred ends of my chin-length hair. "That was an accident. I didn't think that incendiary mine spell would even affect me."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"Is that a giant spider?" Aqua asked.

"I'm pretty sure it's a Heartless," I answered.

Aqua summoned a massive fireball over her head, easily dwarfing us _and_ the Heartless. "I don't like spiders."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Time wasn't easy to measure in the Realm of Darkness, but I'm pretty sure I traveled with Aqua for about a year. We came across more than our fair share of Heartless, but none of them felt like mine. For a while I wondered if, perhaps, we had missed it. Maybe we'd come across it and destroyed it on accident. But always there seemed to be more Heartless. An unending cavalcade of darkened hearts until those we had already destroyed seemed like no more than a drop in a bucket compared to what was still out there.

One day, after a hard trek up a lopsided mountain, we found a cave to sleep in. It wasn't very deep, which made it easy to clear out, and it had an opening large enough to walk through, which made it easy to get in. We set up our defenses and settled in. After the first week with Aqua had resulted in us both waking up every night to my mines going off, the two of us developed a mine spell that exploded silently. I set several dozen at the entrance.

My first clue that something was wrong was when I was awoken by the sound of Aqua's footsteps. Most times, unless something was wrong, I woke before Aqua did. But there she was, awake and walking deeper into the cave. I almost nodded off again, assuming she had just gone off to pee, but she stayed gone for longer than was needed. I rose to go check on her, but when I reached the back of the cave, I found it missing. The back wall had disappeared, revealing a corridor lit by glowing crystals heading deep into the mountain. Aqua was nowhere to be seen.

There was only one place she could have gone. I summoned my bat to my hand and headed deeper into the mountain. As menacing as the situation was, I couldn't leave her behind. She was still useful to me.

The tunnel went down deeper into the mountain, with no side paths to get lost on, giving the impression that it was man-made with a single purpose behind it. And yet, the tunnel's uneven walls and the way it appeared to wind at random through the mountain seemed to say otherwise. It was subtly unnerving in a way I probably could have appreciated better if I had a heart. At long last, the tunnel opened up to a cavern large enough to hold a baseball field, sparsely lit by crystals scattered randomly throughout. And there, standing in the center, was Aqua. She wasn't alone. On the far wall was one of the strangest Heartless I'd ever seen. It resembled a mass of blue tentacles that covered the entire wall, with a central bulge where they all met. In the center of the bulge was the archetypal face of a demon, with red eyes and red-tipped horns.

Aqua jerked, snapping out of whatever trance she had fallen into. She looked around. "Where am I?"

The mass on the wall shifted. "You are in my domain," the face in the center said.

Aqua finally took notice of the being and leapt back, summoning her Keyblade to hand. "Heartless!" she shouted.

"Wait," I said, making my way to her side. I took a sniff of the air. The beast before us, though undoubtedly more powerful than any we had seen before, nonetheless still smelled like a Heartless. Even so, I hesitated. "I've never heard a Heartless speak before."

The creature laughed. "The Heartless you've faced so far are nothing more than beasts, taken by the darkness against their will. But some of us are smarter than that. I gave myself to the darkness willingly, because I knew it would make me powerful."

"Do you have a name, then?" Aqua asked.

"I am Zeromus," it answered.

"What do you want?" I asked. "I'm assuming you didn't bring us here for home décor tips."

"You trespassed on my mountain. That means you forfeit your right to freedom. I will make you both my servants." The central bulge shifted and stretched, carrying Zeromus' face across the cavern until it was immediately in front of Aqua's. "First, I'll have to turn you into a Heartless, so you won't disobey me."

Aqua swung her Keyblade at Zeromus' face, but he pulled it back before she could connect. "It won't be that easy. The light in our hearts is too strong for that."

Zeromus' gaze passed back and forth between us. " _Our_ hearts?" he asked. "She hasn't told you, has she?" His eyes flashed black.

"Told me what?" Aqua asked.

"I can see into your heart, girl. Into your mind. You still think she's human, but you're wrong. She's a Nobody."

I gripped my bat tighter and subtly shifted away from Aqua. It looked like things might be about to go very bad for me.

"What's a Nobody?" Aqua asked.

"A Nobody is a lie. A being that pretends to exist in a world that has no place for it. A Nobody is what's left over when someone loses their heart to darkness. I can't make her into a Heartless, because someone else already did."

Aqua looked at me with wide eyes. "You lied to me?"

I nodded. "Just a little. I didn't think you'd want to help me if you knew the truth."

Zeromus laughed. "That's not all." Yellow eyes began appearing from the shadows around the cavern. Aqua and I stood back-to-back and readied our weapons as a horde of Heartless surrounded us. "All you want is to go home." I grabbed a handful of small stones from a pouch on my belt. "To see your friends again." I cast a spell on each of them, turning them into tiny time bombs, then tossed them in the air. Grabbing my bat with both hands, I swung, hitting every stone at once and sending them flying into the horde at all angles. The explosions took out a good chunk of them. "To feel the sun on your face again." I ran straight towards the remaining Heartless, dragging my bat along the ground. A series of Seeker Mines appeared along the bat's path, each seeking out the nearest being that wasn't myself or Aqua. "Your Nobody friend could have sent you back at any time." I ducked under a smaller Heartless as it leapt at me, grabbed it out of the air, and charged it with my magic. I threw it back into the crowd just in time for it to blow. "The strongest Nobodies can freely pass between the Realms of Light and Darkness." I began tearing through the crowd with my bat, every swing bringing with it another explosion. A dozen Heartless were gone in seconds. "She remains here of her own free will, and it is her will that you remain trapped." I sensed an attack coming from behind me, and I turned just in time to block… Aqua's Keyblade.

"Tell me he's lying," she said, tears starting to form in her eyes. "Tell me this is one of his tricks."

"I don't think you'd be attacking me if you didn't already know the answer to that question," I said.

She pushed harder and I went skidding across the floor. A Heartless leapt to attack me from the side, but Aqua froze it solid with a wave of her hand.

"All this time you've been lying to me. You could've sent me back whenever you wanted. Why would you do that to me?"

"Because you were useful," I said. "Nobodies don't have hearts, so Heartless usually leave us alone, but they were attracted to you. I thought you'd make it easier to find the Heartless I was looking for."

She blinked her eyes repeatedly, clearing away the tears. "I thought we were friends."

"I have no heart. No emotions," I replied. "How can I be your friend without any emotional connection?"

Her face hardened and her tears dried. "You're no better than the Heartless."

I probably could have handled that better, I thought as I blocked her swing. Maybe there were things I could have said, words I could have used, that would have smoothed things over. Maybe I could have convinced her I wasn't a monster. But with only memories of a heart, I couldn't figure out what those words were. I'd forgotten too much, was too out of practice, to understand her emotions and react properly. I'd have to fight instead.

I backed off, putting distance between Aqua and myself. She and I had similar fighting styles; we were both capable close-quarters combatants, but we excelled at long-range magic attacks. The only difference was the types of magic we used. I had another advantage as well; the remaining Heartless had started ignoring me in favor of Aqua.

I knelt down to gather ammo while they distracted her. With a swing of her Keyblade, the closest Heartless disappeared, destroyed by bolts of lightning. I managed to pocket three fist-sized rocks before having to go on the defensive. A wave of fire headed straight towards me. I set a mine off beneath my feet, sending me flying out of the way. Landing, I grabbed the first rock and filled it with magic. The size of the explosion scaled with the size of the bomb, so this one would cause a lot of damage. I batted it at her, but she blocked it with her barrier, though the blast still managed to wipe out a few Heartless.

Grasping her Keyblade tightly, Aqua began spinning in place. Despite how silly it looked, I prepared to defend myself. I'd seen her wipe out large group of Heartless with this attack. Light began shining from her Keyblade as she spun, growing brighter until orbs of light began flying off. A few headed towards the Heartless, but most locked right on to me. I caught the first two orbs with my bat, blowing them to harmless pieces. I also caught the next two, but I missed the fifth, and it was all downhill after that. Over a dozen orbs hit me. Fortunately, I wasn't a creature of darkness, easily weakened by the light, but they still hurt like a bitch.

I responded in kind, slamming my bat into the ground and sending a wave of seeker mines after her. She cartwheeled and backflipped and leapt in the air, summoning barriers of magic in mid-air to leap from. She led some of the mines to the Heartless, got others to collide with each other, and while she was so focused on the ground, I turned another rock into a bomb and caught her in the head with it.

When the smoke cleared, I saw she had patches of skin and hair missing. Her left eye was swollen shut and blood poured down her face, but she still stood. A green light covered her, and the damage disappeared, her face stitching back together until it was as good as new. The green faded, but the light remained, wrapping itself tightly around her body. This I'd also seen before. She swung her Keyblade and it left her hand, spinning across the space between us. I knocked it away, but she waved her hand and it came back from a different angle. This time I met it with a swing of my own, but mine exploded, sending her Keyblade across the cavern. I rushed towards her while her weapon was across the room, but she summoned it back to hand with just a thought. Still, I knew she was less effective at close range, so I kept going. I surrounded us with a ring of mines, so she couldn't back off, and pressed the assault, swinging mercilessly and trying to push her back to the edge. She blocked every one of my swings, proving herself a more than capable swordswoman. She managed to get her Keyblade spinning between us, pushing me back long enough for her to cast a Stop spell on me.

From my point of view, time seemed to skip forward eight seconds. During the time I was stopped, I couldn't hurt her, but she also couldn't hurt me. Instead she had used the time to cast a Magnet spell, drawing in nearby Heartless to trigger the mines for her. I could still see it swirling overhead, a few Heartless caught in its grasp. A bolt of lightning came down to strike them, catching me in its aftershock. I shook it off; I'd been through worse.

I grabbed my last rock as I spotted Aqua across the room. She swung her Keyblade and a wave of icicles rose from the ground, headed straight for me. I gave my rock a special charge in response. The moment my bat hit it, it caught ablaze, napalm burning bright in the dark cave. It pierced through the icicles, easily melting and passing through them. Halfway down the line it got stuck, but that only made it burn brighter until it exploded, sending fire in every direction. The only thing left of her attack was steam.

I was getting ready for the next attack when I noticed the sound. It had been going on for a while, since the battle started, but I was only just registering it for what it was. Zeromus was laughing. I had almost forgotten about him. I looked back to Aqua. I saw her face, the look she was giving me, the pain and anger clear enough for even me to read, and I knew his plan.

I decided I wasn't going to help him. I turned to the exit and ran.

"Come back here!" Aqua shouted, making chase.

I ignored her words and kept running. Once I reached the tunnel, I began dragging my bat along the wall, leaving behind a trail of remote-triggered mines. Aqua followed soon after, and I began detonating the mines right after she passed through their blast radius. As long as she kept running after me, she'd be fine. And if I happened to bring the entire mountain down atop Zeromus in the process, well that was no skin off my nose.

She did keep running after me, but she also decided to attack while she did. A glowing rope made out of Magnet magic latched on to my ankle and pulled me back towards her, dragging me along the ground as it did. I triggered one of the mines early, hitting her and disrupting her concentration. We were almost to the surface when she struck again, shooting towards me in a burst of speed, body and Keyblade both cloaked in lightning. I blocked her first swing, but that turned out to be a bad idea, because the charge ran right through my bat and into my arm. The force of her swing knocked me the rest of the way into our campsite at the mouth of the cave.

With the tunnel collapsed and our campfire long since burned out, the only light in the small cave came from Aqua. That made it a lot easier to notice that it had changed from a bright white to a fainter yellow-green. I held back, not sure what the change signified. I reached into one of my pouches and withdrew a tiny metal ball. Balancing it on my thumb, I flicked it at her, triggering a small explosion behind it as I did. It flew forward with the force of a bullet, but Aqua didn't even flinch as it passed through her chest. Instead she began to fade from view, but I didn't get long to witness it before I was attacked from behind. I spun and swung at my attacker, but once again my attack passed right through.

She's teleporting and leaving behind afterimages, I realized. The realization came too late to protect me from her next attack, which left me sprawled across the floor. I set a massive mine on the ground, wide enough around to catch the both of us. I flew a few feet into the air, while she flew across the room and into the wall.

The moment she recovered, she teleported again. I spun around to catch her from behind, but she struck from the side instead. The next two strikes came from above, and the fourth from straight ahead. I couldn't keep up with her attacks, but thankfully I didn't have to much longer. Her next attack was a bright spear of magic that pierced my side. She repeated the same attack until she had struck from every direction, at which point the spears exploded. When the burst of light faded, only darkness remained.

"Give me back Terra," Aqua's voice sounded from the shadows. I heard a blade passing through the air and raised my bat just in time to deflect her swing. "Give me back Ventus." Another swing, accompanied by a flash of yellow. "Give me back my home!" on the third swing, I dropped my bat and caught her Keyblade with my hand. Pulling her close, I saw clearly the sickly yellow glint of her eyes.

"Stop this, Aqua," I said. "If you keep fighting me like this, you'll lose yourself to the darkness. I can tell you're already close."

"Why do you care?" she asked, though she did stop struggling to free her Keyblade.

"You have a strong heart and a strong will, Aqua. If you lose your heart to the darkness, you'll become a Nobody, like me. That isn't a fate I'd wish on anyone." I released her blade, and she lowered it to her side.

"Leave," she ordered, tears brimming in her eyes again. "Get out of here. I never want to see you again."

I nodded. "Very well." I grabbed my bedroll and supply bag. "Goodbye Aqua." I summoned a corridor of darkness around myself, and teleported to a random spot elsewhere in the Realm of Darkness.


	3. DoSxKingdom Hearts III

I wasn't sure why I did that. When I teleported at random I set my search back years. I had been getting closer, but now I was back where I started. It would have been smarter to send Aqua away, push her through a corridor into the Realm of Light. The only reason I could think of for why I ran like that was because I was afraid, but that was impossible. Nobodies didn't have hearts to be afraid with.

The Realm of Darkness was immense and empty; it was unlikely that Aqua and I would come across each other once, and even less so that we'd do so twice, so I didn't concern myself with the possibility of meeting her again. Instead, I resumed my search. If there was one good thing to come from setting myself back like I did, it was that it gave me a better sense of how close I had gotten. The aching emptiness where my heart used to be grew stronger as I drew closer to my Heartless, as if I were drawn to it like a magnet, but it did so slowly. The sudden change in distance created a gradient that helped me better understand how to use the sense. I teleported a few more times, until I'd found a better starting place closer to my goal.

It occurred to me that perhaps I should have made a map of the places I'd been. It would have slowed me down at first, but it would have been invaluable later. If I had had a map, perhaps I could have triangulated my Heartless' location and found it faster. Without it, though, that was impossible.

Instead, I walked. It took me a couple more years, but finally I got close. I was trekking through a sandy desert and came upon a small oasis town, where I decided to rest for a while. The deserts in the Realm of Darkness are freezing without a sun to warm them, so sleeping anywhere that didn't have four walls was a risky endeavor. I had managed to scavenge a thick black cloak, not all too different from the ones I remembered the Organization members wearing, that proved very useful in defending against the elements, but I still didn't like to take unnecessary chances.

I refilled my food stores and found a mat to sleep on, but after tossing and turning for a few hours, I gave up. The ache was too strong. I got up and continued on for what felt like a week until, at long last, I crested a tall hill and gazed down on my destination.

I had to turn away for a moment, then turn back, just to make sure I wasn't seeing things. On the opposite side of the hill spanned a massive body of water, stretching all the way to the horizon.

Maybe it was because of how close I was to my heart, but I could have sworn I felt a flash of anger for just a moment. I had no boat, but as I reached the shore I realized I was still being pulled. Was my Heartless in the water?

Far out at sea, just on the edge of sight, something caught my eye. It was an island, but it didn't quite seem to be all there. It faded in and out of sight, appearing solid one moment, and fading away in the next, as if it were only partially in the realm. Focusing on the closest visible shore of the island, I created a corridor between there and myself and stepped through.

I felt like I passed through a barrier as I reappeared. The island was solid under my feet, not shifting or fading in any unusual way. I stood on the shore, with the ocean lapping at my ankles. The island seemed rather small, though my view of it was admittedly limited. A humongous cliff topped with foliage dominated the island, cutting off my view of everything behind it. A massive, ancient tree stood before the cliff, dwarfing it in height. To the right of the tree, a waterfall somehow poured out of the cliff into a pool, despite having no obvious source.

There were Heartless everywhere, but at the base of the tree stood one of note. It was shaped like a deer, with a dark purple back and legs, a forest green stomach, and pitch black antlers, each with over a dozen sharp branches. It was large, too. Standing on all fours, it would have been able to look me in the eyes. I knew the moment I set eyes on it, that it was my Heartless.

It locked eyes with me, and every Heartless in the area turned in my direction. I summoned my weapon. It seemed things wouldn't go down without a fight.

Most of the Heartless were small, weak creatures; the kind that hadn't been a threat to me in years. A series of mines spider-webbed out from my feet, branching in every direction until there was nothing in my way. I burst through the resulting cloud of smoke, landing right in front of my Heartless. It turned and ran. I reached to grab it, but my fingers only brushed against its coarse fur before it disappeared in a cloud of smoke and shadow. The cloud whisked away, travelling towards the pool. Between the pool and the tree, at an angle hidden from the view of the shore, was an out-of-place pair of marble doors, and standing before them was a girl. Before I could interfere or shout a warning, the cloud reformed and pinned the girl against the doors with its antlers. Considering it to be sufficiently distracted, I leapt forward and attacked. A moment before I touched it, my Heartless dispersed, dropping the girl to the ground. Sand crunched beneath hooves behind me as it galloped away, but I didn't make chase.

The girl was familiar in a way that drew me in. She had short red hair and blue eyes and was about my age, give or take a couple years. Her wounds were mostly superficial, only one or two were bleeding. Decade-old memories resurfaced as I traced the lines of her face. "Kairi?" I muttered.

She turned her face towards mine in response. Her eyes were dazed and unfocused, as if she were in some kind of trance. She rose to her feet, brushing me aside as she stood, and passed through the doors. The lack of sleep must have been affecting my ability to think straight, because I followed her at a distance.

The doors opened up to a tunnel in the cliffside that led to a small cave. There were etchings and chalk drawings all along the walls, drawn with the artistic talent and imagination of a young child. Kairi stopped at the far end of the cave, in front of a wooden door with gold etchings. The island seemed to have a thing for out-of-place doors.

I stood to the side and watched, not really sure why I had followed her. Yes, she was my sister, but was that really important? My heart was getting away, and I would lose its trail if I stayed much longer. And yet I couldn't get myself to leave. Something seemed to be holding me in place.

A few minutes after I'd arrived, the sound of footsteps echoed throughout the cave. Someone was coming. Pressing myself further into the shadows, I waited and watched. A boy with a wild mess of brown hair ran into the cavern and called Kairi's name. If there had been any lingering doubts about her identity, that dispelled them.

Kairi turned to face the boy. "Sora," she mumbled. Suddenly, the door behind her flung open, releasing a gust of darkness and wind. I held my ground as it hit, but Kairi was picked up by it, blown into the boy's open arms. The moment the two touched, however, Kairi vanished. A moment later the boy was also picked up by the wind, and went flying back through the tunnel. I managed to hold out until it passed, though I ended up pressed flat against the cave wall.

I hadn't realized it at first, but Kairi's presence had soothed the empty aching where my heart used to be, until I almost didn't feel it. The moment she disappeared, however, it returned with a vengeance. I turned towards the cave exit… and collapsed. The sleepless week had finally caught up to me, and I could no longer stay awake.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

When I finally awoke, I found the island a very different place. For starters, about half of it was missing, while the remaining half was scattered across the water in a few dozen pieces. I didn't give it more thought than needed to orient myself and determine the direction my Heartless had fled in.

I paused to reconsider that last thought. My Heartless had fled. Was it afraid of me? My entire being ached to be whole again, to fill in the missing piece, but that didn't seem to be the case for my Heartless. That might have explained why it took so long for me to find it, if it was avoiding me the whole time. A mild change of plan was required: I couldn't just locate it, I'd have to trap it and force it back into me.

I spotted a boat floating freely in the water and leapt into it, then took off in the direction my Heartless had fled. A few minutes later, I found myself backtracking. I kept trying different directions, but every time I kept having to turn back. I found the ache was strongest at a spot in the middle of the water, about 100 meters from the shore.

I stopped to consider my conundrum. There were two possibilities that I could see. The first was that my Heartless had gone either straight up or straight down. I doubted both of these, because it wasn't an aquatic Heartless, and because there didn't seem to be anything above me for it to go to. The other possibility was that it had gone somewhere else entirely.

I looked back at the island, remembering how it had looked when I first saw it from a distance. It no longer appeared to be flickering, but was solid, albeit fragmented. In a flash of insight, I understood what had happened. When I had first seen it, the island had been in the process of being dragged from the Realm of Light into the Realm of Darkness. That's why it hadn't appeared fully solid. And if that was the case, then my Heartless had to be somewhere in the Realm of Light.

I opened a corridor that would take me to where the islands had been in the Realm of Light, but when I arrived there was nothing there. Literally nothing. It was like being lost in outer space, except my body wasn't being slowly pulled apart and I could still breathe. In every direction there was only darkness, dotted by the occasional star. However, I knew I had succeeded; the moment I passed through the portal, the ache had increased. Now I just had to determine which direction my Heartless had gone in, and follow it.

I found there were only two ways for me to move, trapped as I was in what appeared to be interstellar space. The first was to teleport along my line of sight via Corridors of Darkness. The other was to trigger an explosion behind me, sending me flying in the opposite direction. I opted for a combination of the two, flying through corridors at high speed until I reached my destination.

I saw it from a distance first. Rather than appear as a planet, my destination resembled a large plane, dominated by a city with a huge arena at the center. I landed in a newly-formed crater on the outskirts of the city. I could tell that my Heartless had moved on already, passing through here to the next world, but I was running low on supplies. Getting them was a little more complicated without munny, but I managed. I'd spent enough lifetimes as a ninja or thief to get by without being caught. I tried to buy a map while I was there, but no one had any that covered more than the city.

I kept that up for months, travelling through the Realm of Light, searching for my Heartless. I came close several times, but it managed to escape again and again. On one such occasion, I confronted it just outside a strangely Halloween-themed town. I chased it out of the town, past a hill with a curled tip, and into a forest, where it disappeared among the trees. That wouldn't have been enough to stop me, but the swarm of Heartless waiting for me managed to slow me down. Still, I would have been close enough to catch up, if not for yet another arrival.

"There you are," a voice sounded from behind me. "It's been a long while. You've certainly grown since I last saw you." I turned to face the voice. There, wearing the same black coat that I was, stood a man with wild red hair, a Corridor of Darkness closing behind him. "What's the matter, don't remember me? The name's Axel, got it memorized?"

I stayed silent, waiting for him to get to the point. Part of me wanted to turn and chase after my Heartless, but I wasn't sure turning my back on this person was at all a good idea.

"How about you? None of us caught your name last time we met."

"Kikyo," I responded. "What do you want?"

"Wow," he said, "you don't even pretend, do you?"

"Pretend what? To have emotions? That dog-and-pony show wouldn't fool anyone here."

The happy-go-lucky, relaxed look dropped from Axel's eyes. "Alright then, down to business. I'm here on behalf of Organization XIII. You remember them, right?"

I nodded.

"Good. Now, it's been almost a decade since you last saw us, and our ranks have filled since then. Fortunately for you, however, there's been a few openings recently, so our previous offer to you stands for a little while longer. This is your last chance to join the Organization."

"No thanks," I deadpanned.

"That's not an option." He threw his hands to the side, summoning a pair of spiked discs that resembled giant chakrams. "We were fine with you wandering around the Realm of Darkness on your futile search, but we can't have you here in the Realm of Light, where you could mess things up for us. Organization XIII can't risk you interfering with their plans."

I summoned my bat in response. "It wasn't futile. I found my Heartless, and I've almost caught it."

He hadn't seemed to expect that. "Seriously?! You actually found it?"

"It was here just a few minutes ago."

"For real?"

"Yes." I wasn't sure why he needed clarification; lying wouldn't have helped me any.

His eyes stared right through me. "You know, I used to wonder if, maybe, I should have gone with you, all those years ago."

"The Organization hasn't made you a new heart yet, then?" I asked.

His eyes refocused on me. "We're almost there. And right now, I have my orders."

A circle of fire roared to life around us, limiting my movement. It seemed Axel was trying to control the battlefield from the first move. I responded in kind, crisscrossing the ground within the circle with a variant of my usual mines. The moment he stepped on one, a shower of icicles exploded upwards. He stumbled over several before finding his footing on empty ground.

His chakrams spun rapidly at his side, gathering flames with each turn. An orb of fire expanded around him, destroying the ice magic in the mines.

I turned a handful of pebbles into bombs and shot them at the fireball to test its strength, but it absorbed them without dwindling. Trying again, I sent a string of mines along the ground towards it, but they detonated harmlessly against it. I was left to wait until Axel finished whatever he was doing. Finally, when the fireball had covered half of the ring, it dissipated. Axel flew out of it swinging. I met his first chakram with my bat, sending it flying with an explosion, and caught the follow-up strike from the other one with my hand. Holding tight, I leapt and slammed both feet into his chest. An explosive beneath my feet sent me flying over the ring of fire, and drove Axel into the ground. I grabbed a tree branch as I passed it and swung up onto it. If we were going to fight in a forest it would be on my terms.

I turned and leapt through the trees, heading in the direction my Heartless had traveled in. Predictably, my opponent gave chase. He sent his chakrams flying towards me, flaming discs cutting through branches and leaving ash and fire in their wake. Perhaps, I considered, leading the walking flamethrower deeper into the forest was a bad idea.

The trees in the forest were bare of leaves, and the branches weren't the greatest for tree leaping, but they did have very thick bark. I stopped long enough to peel off a few chunks of the surprisingly heavy material. The smell of smoke gave me barely enough warning to leap out of the way as the tree I stood in was engulfed in a pillar of flames.

Sneaking away was out of the question, I decided. Unlike my Heartless, I didn't savor the idea of leaving any pursuers alive and able to continue chasing me. Furthermore, Axel seemed likely to torch the whole forest if he lost me for too long. In fact, he seemed to already be doing just that. I slipped silently through the treetops until I was behind him and batted a chunk of bark that I had turned into an icicle bomb at the back of his head. I was already moving by the time it hit him, repeating the action several more times.

After a few hits, I suppose Axel must have gotten tired of being assaulted by an unseen opponent, because he retaliated. He gathered fire tightly around both chakrams and slammed them into the ground. The already high temperature in the forest skyrocketed in an instant. The ground got so hot it started glowing and melting until a layer of molten rock covered the surface. Even high up in a tree I could feel the heat. And yet Axel stood in the center of it all, seemingly unfazed.

The lava ate away at the tree roots before moving up, burning the trees from the inside out. The base of the tree I stood in was soon nothing more than hot ash and slag, and it, like many others, began swaying dangerously. Giving up on subtlety, I reached into my supply bag and pulled out two heavy lead balls, each the size of a baseball. I readied my newest spell; it was a spell I was still learning to use, and I could only cast it on sufficiently heavy objects like the lead balls. I tossed the two balls over the slowly growing lava pit on opposite sides of Axel and then hauled ass in the opposite direction.

I didn't stop to watch the proceeding events, but I could guess what happened. The two bombs would come to a stop about three feet above the ground, then activate. The first thing they would do was collapse in on themselves until they were nearly microscopic. Then, they would start to draw loose material in the environment towards them, most of which would consist of the lava beneath them. If Axel hadn't moved yet, then he would feel a strong tug in the directions of each of the spheres, but not so strong that he couldn't ignore it and escape. The lava and other materials would gather around the balls, orbiting in every direction and congregating on the microscopic core. Finally, once the magic that was temporarily increasing the density of the spheres deteriorated enough, the bombs would snap back to normal size, releasing all the energy and matter they'd accumulated and shattering in the process. The result was an explosion so strong, not even I was completely immune to it. I called it a gravity bomb. If Axel got caught in it, then, heat resistant or not, the battle was definitely over.

I wasn't one to settle for maybes, though. Once the explosions had ended, I returned to the blast site. The trees nearest the epicenter were just gone, only ash and shadows remaining to memorialize them. Further out, a wide ring of trees had been felled by the blast, good for nothing but lumber now. It was among this ring that I found Axel, cradling a badly broken arm.

He turned his head in my direction as I approached. "We'll let you off the hook this time," he said, "but we'll meet again." Before I could respond, he disappeared through a Corridor of Darkness.

With that enemy out of my way, I returned my focus to hunting my Heartless, not giving a second thought to the forest still burning behind me.


	4. DoSxKingdom Hearts IV

I stepped out of the corridor and was greeted by familiar settings. Of course I'd end up back here eventually. Back in Radiant Garden, where it all began. It was the perfect place to end it.

I tracked my Heartless to the market. As usual it tried to flee, but I knew these surroundings well. A plan was already forming as I began herding it towards downtown. I dropped mines along the streets in front of me, limiting the paths available to my prey.

As I ran I passed many people, including a trio consisting of a spiky-haired boy, a very tall duck, and an anthropomorphic dog. Normally such a group wouldn't catch my attention, I had seen many stranger things in my recent travels, except this trio didn't run out of the way screaming like everyone else. Instead, they turned after I passed and followed me. I paid them just enough attention to ensure that they weren't going to interfere or slow me down.

Winding through the streets, and over the occasional building, we soon approached our destination. Blocking off all other paths, I forced my Heartless down a small back alley. The passage was narrow, only large enough for one person at a time to pass, and went on for a few dozen meters before opening up to a large, empty lot. The windowless backs of a dozen buildings encircled us. A quirk in the layout of the nearby streets and the architecture of the buildings had led to this purposeless area being created. I had discovered it when I was young, and it had been my place to disappear to when I needed to be alone.

There was only one way in or out of the area, and I was standing in it. Stretching my arms out, I placed my hands on both walls. Mines sprung forth from my fingertips and spread across the buildings until they covered every surface all the way to the top. These weren't my usual mines, though, but a special variant I had created after battling my Heartless enough times. It tried to scale one of the buildings in a cloud of shadow, but the moment it got too close a blast of light magic exploded from one of the mines, forcing it back to deer shape. The mines were modified flashbangs, with more emphasis on the flash than the bang. Covering the buildings with them meant I wasn't going to be able to use any more for a while, but that was fine. I just needed to keep my Heartless in one place long enough to make it submit.

"Organization XIII!" a squawky, hard-to-understand voice called from behind me. "What are you up to, leaving bombs all over the place like that?" It seemed the trio that's been chasing me had finally caught up.

I didn't take my eyes off my Heartless as I addressed them. "What makes you think I'm with the Organization?"

"You're wearing their coat," a second voice answered.

It did look similar, I supposed. "It's functional and comfortable, but I'm not with them. I'm just here for this Heartless." I entered the ring of buildings and summoned my bat. "I recommend staying out of my way."

The boy, who had thus far been silent, ran up to my side and summoned, to my surprise, a keyblade. "If you're going to fight that Heartless, you can't be all bad. Let us help."

If he was a keyblade wielder, he could probably take care of himself in a fight. "Alright," I conceded. "If you want to help, guard the exit. I can't have this thing escaping again."

He nodded. "Donald, Goofy, guard the exit." It seemed I was getting his help whether I wanted it or not. Well, fine then. Maybe his heart would be enough of a lure to keep my Heartless around. "My name's Sora, by the way. How about you?"

"Kikyo."

Sora made the first move, calling down a bolt of lightning. My Heartless avoided the bolt by turning into its shadow form and racing forward. It solidified in front of Sora and struck with its antlers, knocking him back. The moment it did so, I was already swinging. I caught it on its underside before it could disappear again, a concentrated explosion sending it into the air. Sora seemed familiar with fighting alongside others, because he quickly capitalized on its poor position. He flung his keyblade through the air, striking my Heartless in the neck, then calling it back to his hand and repeating the action four more times.

As the Heartless approached the ground I leapt forward, leaving explosive mines behind with every step, but it had already dissolved to shadows before I reached it. I sent a line of mines to either side of me, boxing my Heartless in. It backed off and lowered its reformed head.

"Watch out!" I warned my new allies.

Our opponent's antlers shot forward, stretching out, branching and bending to attack from every direction. Several tendrils swept through my line of mines, detonating them early. The rest targeted me and my allies. I didn't have much in the way of defensive skills, but I was fast, especially with the aid of my explosions. I dodged and deflected most of the branches, but a few made it through my defenses, stabbing into me like needles. I ignored the injuries; you could hardly even see the blood on the black coat.

Sora had come out of the assault better off than I had; a quick glance backwards showed the same was true of the other two. I shot forward, an explosion behind giving me an extra burst of speed, and grabbed my Heartless by the throat before it could disappear again. It struggled helplessly as I pressed it to the ground, covering it with my full weight.

"Submit!" I shouted. "Stop running away and come back." Yellow met green as it locked eyes with me. Then, giving a keel of defiance, the ground opened up beneath it and it sank downwards. It disappeared, leaving my fingers grasping dirt and weeds.

I stood and look around warily. It hadn't ever done that before. Would it escape again? I hadn't prepared anything underground to stop it.

The earth rumbled, and in the center of the lot, a pitch black sapling sprouted. It grew rapidly, unfolding upwards until it resembled a massive tree, with a thick trunk surrounded by a shifting mass of bare branches pointing in every direction.

It was like the antlers all over again, but larger and more numerous. Sora summoned an orb of light at the end of his keyblade, which shot forward as a set of lasers, each intercepting a shadow tendril. I did something similar, turning a handful of pebbles into small bombs and shooting them forward like shotgun pellets. We kept attacking and defending, but we couldn't stop every attack. One branch caught me in the shoulder. Another wrapped around my ankle and pulled me through the air until I collided with Sora. As we helped each other to our feet, a wave of green light washed over us, healing most of our wounds. Courtesy of the wand-waving duck, no doubt.

One of the thicker branches approached, but this time I dodged to the side, grabbed it, and pulled myself up. It was just wide enough to walk on, if a bit difficult to stay atop. Sora mimicked me with another branch, showing surprising balance for guy with such big feet, and we proceeded to make our way deeper.

Adrenaline pumped through my veins and I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears. I was right in the heart of danger, deftly dodging an onslaught of attacks. But I was also in my element, fighting and running in a three-dimensional environment, swinging and leaping from branch to branch. I left mines with every step, covering the tree like they were Christmas lights. I soon lost track of Sora, but I didn't pay that much mind. Instead, I kept pushing my way forward until I could see the trunk of the tree. I was low to the ground at that point, so I leapt down, keeping my head low. I was mildly surprised when Sora joined me a few moments later. It was good to know that my help was competent, at least. Maybe one day he'd match up to Aqua's level.

"Let's cut this thing down," Sora said. We both shot forward at high speed. A huge mass of branches headed towards us, twisting together to form a single, giant spear. Before it could reach us, I remotely triggered every mine I had set in the tree, more than a few of which had been wrapped up into the spear. It was blasted apart, and what few branches continued through were warded off by Sora summoning a ring of bright fire around us.

We both swung, blade and bat tearing through the base of the tree. The trunk exploded where I hit it, but were both well outside the blast zone in an instant. Mines were still exploding in the trees branches as it fell to the ground behind us. Hot wind sent our hair flying. The only way the moment could have been more perfect was if Sora and I had been wearing sunglasses.

Separated from its creator, the tree was already dissolving by the time it finished falling. It touched down with barely a sound.

The earth shook again, this time harder than before. Rock and gravel were overturned, and chunks of stone taller than a grown man rose to a standing position. A full set of antlers rose from the center of the lot, followed by a head, and the front half of my Heartless. However, in the time that it had been underground, it seemed to have undergone a growth spurt. It looked to be about three times as tall and thirty times as massive as it used to be. Even half inside a hole, it towered over us.

It swung its head, stygian antlers tearing gouges through the earth and pulling up still more stones. Sora rolled out of the way while I leapt back behind a large, upturned boulder to avoid the spray of gravel. The moment I stepped into the rocks shadow, however, I could no longer see. The stone seemed to be casting a shadow so thick, no light could enter it.

An invisible blow to my stomach knocked me out of the shadow. I backed off, stepping carefully. Now that I took a closer look at my surroundings, I saw that all of the rocks my Heartless had upturned were casting impossibly dark shadows.

The shadows began to separate from the objects casting them and take a new shape. Countless pure black clones of my Heartless appeared, ranging from the size of a small mouse, to as large as a moose.

I stood before an army, with only a boy and his key to back me up, and I could feel no fear. I couldn't afford to lose here; I couldn't keep chasing my missing piece across all of existence. I had it cornered, I _would_ win.

The shadow copies proved surprisingly resilient. I'll admit, I'd grown used to most enemies falling in a few blows, but these were not so easy. The most effective way of destroying them was to lure them near the walls, then throw them into a mine. The light magic in the flash mines made short work of the shadows.

The small copies proved just as resilient as the larger ones, but were less powerful, so I took out the biggest ones first. Eventually, with time and effort, the number of enemies began to dwindle. However, the moment they got too low, my Heartless swung its antlers through the ground and made more copies.

I bit back a curse after it did so for a second time. All we were doing fighting the copies was tiring ourselves out; we needed to take out the source. But we'd tried to get close before, and when we did it swung a hoof at us, sending us flying.

I turned to Sora. We'd been sticking close together so far, watching each other's backs as we fought. That needed to change. "Go right, I'll go left," I told him. "If we split his focus, one of us can get close enough to do some damage."

He nodded and took off. I followed his example. The shadow copies tried to get in my way, but I didn't slow down. While they proved difficult to destroy, they were relatively easy to avoid or knock out of the way.

The moment Sora and I were at opposite ends of the lot, we turned directions, coming in with a pincer attack. My Heartless chose to focus its strength on Sora. I wasn't surprised; Sora's bright heart made better bait than me. Still, it didn't ignore me completely. While it swung its hooves at an extremely agile Sora, its entire army of shadow copies were free to focus on me.

I spun around one copy, knocked another out of my way, and slid under the legs of a third, stopping right as I came to the edge of the giant hole my Heartless was sticking out of. There was just enough room for me to slip down into the darkness beneath it.

Not wanting to give it the chance to retaliate, I acted as soon as my hands and feet hit the bottom. I poured magic into the earth, setting the biggest explosive I could fit on the ground under my Heartless. I rode the shockwave from the detonation into the air, easily keeping pace with my now-airborne counterpart. Once we were high enough, I swung my bat as hard as I could into its side, letting the resulting explosion add to the force of my swing.

My Heartless slammed into the wall, triggering a couple dozen mines in the process, and it was at that moment I realized I'd miscalculated. During all the fighting with the copies, Sora and I'd detonated a large number of the mines. My last attack, while causing significant damage to my opponent, had cleared a path straight to the top of the buildings. I knew in an instant my Heartless would try to flee again. After all, it was clearly losing the battle.

It shed weight as we fell to the ground, and by the time we'd landed it was back down to its original size. It seemed to be too weak to revert to shadow form, but that didn't seem to stop it from climbing straight up the side of the building, swerving around flash mines as it went.

I detonated a mine beneath my feet, catapulting me directly above it. I swung and it dodged, but it wasn't fast enough to avoid being grabbed by the scruff of the neck with my free hand.

I spun in the air and threw my Heartless straight back down to the ground. Sora had followed my lead and leapt straight up the side of the building, meeting it halfway between me and the ground. Keyblade met Heartless, and the Heartless gave way. Its body melted away, scattering to the four winds, and from its center, a single heart rose into the air.

In the moment of my triumph I froze, so surprised that it was over that I forgot to claim my spoils. My heart soared past, just out of reach, and I snapped back to reality.

"Give me a boost!" I shouted as I fell. I landed on Sora's keyblade as he reached the apex of his jump. He swung as hard as he could and, aided by an explosion from me, we went soaring in opposite directions.

I stretched out my arm. I could just about touch it; it was so close I could feel the desperation. The gnawing emptiness, worse than ever before, made it hard to breathe. My fingers brushed against it, and then my whole hand.

My heart was hot. It was cold. It was sharp and it was blunt. It was so many things it was overwhelming, but more than anything else it was alive. I held it tight against my chest, never wanting to let go again.

I don't remember hitting the ground.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

I once compared being a Nobody to falling into the black, but looking back I could see there were differences. When you fell into the black, all of your emotions were suppressed; pushed down and buried under a pile of darkness until you could no longer hear their call or taste their pleasure. When you became a Nobody, however, your emotions were ripped out of you, leaving a gaping wound where they used to be. Likewise, recovering from the two states was also a different experience. If you were lucky enough to come out of the black, you did so slowly, the world around you regaining a little more color and life with each second. Regaining your lost heart is a very different experience.

The first thing I noticed as I regained consciousness was how soft the bed I was lying on was. I hadn't slept in a proper bed in years, and this one felt like laying on a cloud. I almost drifted back to sleep when I noticed the low murmur of whispered voices nearby. My eyes snapped open as I felt panic for the first time in a decade. I was in a strange bed, in an unfamiliar house, surrounded by complete strangers.

I leapt from the bed and made for the nearest window. It wasn't open, but I didn't let that slow me down. Outside I was greeted by a small pack of Heartless, which didn't do any good for my mental state. Rather than stay and fight, I vaulted up the side of the building and fled. Soon, the thrill of leaping across rooftops caught up to me, and I was whooping and hollering across the city.

My emotions were extremely erratic, and I recognized that I was having trouble controlling them. I stopped and leaned against a chimney, taking deep breaths until I'd calmed down.

Whoever's house I'd been in, I thought, they hadn't seemed to be trying to keep me captive. I hadn't been chained to the bed, nor had the windows been barred. Thinking back to the last thing I recalled before waking up, I determined that Sora and his friends had probably brought me somewhere to recover after I'd gotten my heart back.

I turned back, making my way more slowly this time, until I found the house I'd woken up in. I leapt to the ground and knocked on the door.

A man with bright blond hair and aviator goggles answered the door while chewing on a stick. "Well look who came back," he said.

"Hey, um…" This was kind of awkward now. "Sorry about your window."

"Ah, don't worry 'bout it," he shrugged. "The dang thing breaks nearly every week these days. Too many Heartless around. We've got a dozen replacements in the back."

"Right." The awkwardness wasn't going away. What else was I supposed to say? I didn't think "thank you" was quite the right thing. "I take it Sora was the one who brought me to you guys?" The man nodded in response. "Is he still here?"

"He's running some errands with Leon right now, but he'll be back soon. Come in." The man stepped to the side, letting me pass through the door. "Name's Cid, by the way." He waved his hand at a girl in a pink and white dress. "This is Aerith."

"It's nice to meet you, miss Kikyo," Aerith greeted.

"Likewise." I accepted the seat and cup of tea I was offered, and sat and waited.

Sora walked through the door as I emptied my cup, accompanied by his two friends from before and a brown-haired human in a leather jacket. I took a closer look at Sora than I had previously had the opportunity to. His spiky brown hair rung familiar in my head. In an instant, I remembered him and was half out of my seat. "You're the boy from the island!"

My sudden outburst drew everyone's gaze. I rubbed my neck sheepishly. "Sorry, my emotions are a little… hectic right now. I'll get them under control soon. I'm just not used to having them."

Sora grinned at me. "You seem a lot happier than before. I guess that battle must've been pretty important to you. But what do you mean, 'you're not used to having emotions'?"

I sighed. Sora had helped me out a lot in getting my heart back. I owed him at least something of an explanation. "Do you know what a Nobody is?"

"So you are with the Organization, then," leather jacket said.

"No," I replied. "They offered me a spot once, but I turned them down." I turned back to Sora. "Until very recently, I was a Nobody. The Heartless you helped me defeat was my other half. I've been tracking it for around a decade, through the Realms of Darkness and Light both. I've been empty for so long that it's taking some adjustment to having a heart again." The room was silent after that, me enjoying the feeling of being whole again, and everyone else not knowing what to say or not wanting to interrupt. Aerith refilled my teacup and I snapped back to the outside world. "Right, like I was saying, I've seen you before. You're friends with Kairi, aren't you?"

"You know Kairi!" he exclaimed.

I nodded fiercely. The boy's enthusiasm was dangerously contagious. "She's my little sister. I haven't seen her since our home was attacked by Heartless. I'd love to see her again. Where is she?"

"She's back at our home, Destiny Islands."

"Sweet. Where is that from here? Do you have a map?"

"Ummm, actually…" Now it was Sora's turn to look sheepish. "We don't actually know how to get back, or where the islands are from here."

"What." I said.

"Right now we're trying to find our other friends and stop Organization XIII. Once we're done with that, we'll figure out some way to get home."

The teacup in my hand shattered, spraying me with hot tea and ceramic shards. I didn't take note. "So you're telling me you left your friend, my sister, behind, without even having any way of visiting her or checking up on her safety? While you went up against an extremely dangerous group of emotionless powerhouses? That seemed like a good idea to you?"

"Hey, hey!" he said, waving his hands between us as if to ward me off. "It wasn't our idea to get lost, it just happened that way. I'd love to visit home, but I can't."

I took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. These mood swings were getting annoying; if I got much angrier things were going to start exploding. "Okay," I said once I'd calmed down. "Despite your current situation, you're still my best bet at seeing my sister again. Let me help you out. I owe the Organization a bit of payback anyway."

Sora shared a glance with the duck and dog. Neither seemed too opposed to the idea. "Sure," he said. "We'd be glad to have your help."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

I hadn't realized, when I offered Sora my assistance, just what I was getting into. Traveling through the worlds was a dangerous thing for someone like myself to do. Even when I'd been hunting my Heartless, I had made an effort to avoid people whenever I could. I'd even been mostly successful.

Our first destination had us landing in a thick bamboo grove. Not long after our arrival, we ran across a girl pretending to be a boy pretending to be a soldier, as well as her guardian dragon, who Sora, Donald, and Goofy appeared to be familiar with. I, on the other hand, was feeling like the entire situation was familiar, dragon included, but couldn't pinpoint exactly why.

We followed the girl, whose real name was Mulan but was going by Ping, back to the encampment where her recruitment group was stationed. The sense of déjà vu grew stronger as I approached. When we entered, Mulan pointed across the camp at a pair of men with the air of authority about them. "The man in the red cloak is Captain Shang; he's in charge of training us. The man next to him is his advisor, Councilman Zhu Jun."

I stared at the man she pointed out. From across the camp, our eyes met. 'Dammit,' I thought. 'This is why I don't like traveling to other worlds.'


	5. DoSxHunger Games I

1) I was reborn –again– as Ashley Beck to a pair of coal miners. At first my life was pleasant; we didn't have much in the way of technology or food, but my parents were kind and loving, and I didn't feel the need to push myself to develop faster than a normal child. When I was three years old, however, I learned just what kind of world I now lived in. When I was three, I witnessed my first reaping, and learned about the Hunger Games.

2) When I was five, I returned home from school, eager for the scheduled return of my parents from the mines. They didn't come back. There had been an accident in the mine, and they were caught in it. With no remaining family, and with my parents few friends caught in the same accident, I had no one left to take care of me. That was fine, though; I could care for myself. I took small jobs for money when I could, and stole only when I absolutely had to. Everyone in District 12 was starving, so I did too.

3) As I grew older, I spent more and more time in the forest just outside the District. The hunting in the forest was decent, and I was good enough that before long I no longer needed to steal to get by. I wasn't technically supposed to be there, they had it blocked off with an electric fence, but I managed to get in and out despite that. Every system has its flaws, and I drove the local Peacekeepers crazy with how easily I could find the flaws in their system.

4) On my twelfth birthday I was added to the drawing for the 21st Hunger Games. My name wasn't chosen. I felt bad for the people who were reaped, but there was little I could do for them. I wasn't chosen for the 22nd, 23rd, or 24th Games either. Then came the announcement of the First Quarter Quell and the altered rules. One month before the reaping was scheduled, the districts were told that we would have to choose our own tributes; _we_ would have to decide who would be sent off to die. District 12 had never had a Victor return from the games, so everyone knew that a place in the games was a death sentence. Ours was a small and closely-knit community, and I knew having to make that choice would destroy us. I refused to watch that happen, so I did the only thing I could; I volunteered. One month wasn't long, but it was enough time to get my name out there and let everyone know that I would go willingly. Most people wore looks of gratitude when I told them to vote for me, a few followed that look with one of self-disgust as they realized they were happy a child was volunteering to die so theirs could live.

5) District 12 was a place of little hope, but it wasn't completely bereft of noble souls. Taylor Hillfyre was an eighteen year old boy who, like me, campaigned for Tribute. The votes were tallied, our names were called, and as we stood on the stage looking out at the rest of our home, we both managed to smile and wave. We acted as if we were honored to take part in the games, and did everything we could to lighten the burden of the people we knew as friends and family.

6) Taylor was a bright and friendly boy with a sunny disposition. I hadn't known him before we boarded the train together, but as we talked together I started to wish I had. Despite my best efforts to keep him at a distance, knowing what would happen once we were in the arena, he managed to repeatedly pull me into conversation. He was naively optimistic in a way that was comforting and familiar. He reminded me of— I stomped on that thought before it could grow and ground it six feet into the earth. If you live long enough, you start to see the same people behind different eyes. It doesn't matter, and you definitely shouldn't spend several decades trying and failing to get a person you're certain was once your brother to remember you, because it won't work and will only hurt everyone involved. Trust me, I've got personal experience with this kind of thing. So regardless of who Taylor might have been in a past life, and whether or not he once had blonde hair and blue eyes and a heart too big for his own good, all I had was the boy in front of me. That was all that mattered.

7) There had never been a winner from District 12 before, so our Mentor position was filled by a retired soldier from the Capitol who didn't give a damn and was convinced his job was punishment detail. He had held the role of Mentor for over two decades, and was the last of the original mentors to still hold the position. By the time Taylor and I met him he had long given up on producing a Victor and retiring, and was absolutely no help. He explained the basics to us and went back to drinking. Our Stylist was more passionate, bless her soul, but lacked in skill. Our outfits for the chariot ride looked like something out of a kindergartener's play. As I waved at the crowd I did my best to bury my embarrassment and vowed to have a strong hand in designing any future outfits.

8) "This isn't right," Taylor whispered to me on the first night, as we sat alone in our temporary quarters. "These Games are wrong."

"Of course they are," I replied, "but what can be done about it?" I had no future knowledge of this world; if I'd ever read a story like this, then I'd long forgotten it. There was no revolution stirring, nor was there a readymade army for me to join and fight in. All I could do was survive, and maybe I would find an opportunity to fight back if I lasted long enough. No government lasts forever, especially oppressive ones. History, in every world, is marked by revolutions and fallen empires.

Taylor was quiet for a time. "If we win," he finally said, "we'll spend a lot of time in the Capitol. Maybe we can change things, get people to recognize the Games for what they are and see how the Districts are suffering."

I smiled at the optimism of youth and good people, but I didn't let him see it. "There's no 'we' in these Games," I reminded him. He didn't respond for the rest of the night.

9) Between our uninvolved Mentor and our less-than-stellar showing in the opening ceremony, we had little chance of gaining sponsors. Taylor responded to this by doing his best to show off and make friends in the Training Center; not just allies, he seemed to genuinely be trying to befriend them. I went in the other direction. I had centuries of skill, more than enough to win this even without outside help. And making friends with these people would just make it harder to kill them. The first day I watched the other Tributes and learned what skills they had. For those who wished to show off, the first day meant making a good first impression. I did visit a few stations myself, but I stuck to the ones I knew little about, like the edible insects and archery stations, hoping to pick up a few new skills while I had the chance. I didn't even show up the second or third days, instead spending it with my Stylist designing my outfit for the upcoming interview.

10) Attendance was mandatory for the fourth day, as it was our private session to be officially graded. The other Tributes were called in one at a time until at last they called for me. I scanned the layout of the room as I entered and came up with a quick plan. While I didn't feel the need to show off to sponsors, a low score would cause the other Tributes to target me as easy prey. I needed to show off enough to make up for my previous lack of appearance. The training room was conveniently laid out so that the tree climbing station was on the opposite side of the room as the knife throwing station. That suited me perfectly. I stuffed a half dozen knives in my belt and jogged to the tree-like pillars across the room. Forgoing a harness, I leapt to the first branch and began clambering upwards. 'Really, I could do this sort of thing in my sleep,' I thought. As I neared the top and my time ticked downwards, I grabbed one of the knives and let it fly. Before it had made it halfway across the room, I was already moving to a new vantage point. The next knife was loosed as the first hit square in center of a dummy's head. I kept it up until I ran out of weapons, with every knife landing a lethal blow. Then, unarmed and clinging to the highest point of the pillar, I leapt to the padded floor thirty feet below and stuck a three-point landing. It hurt like several naughty words I'm too old and wise to use, but it looked impressive. I stood, bowed, and did my best not to stumble as I left. I must have fooled them, because they ended up giving me a score of 10.

11) For the interview I wore a midnight-black sleeveless dress studded with diamonds. I wasn't particularly curvy, hard life largely spent hunting in a forest meant I built up a fair bit of muscle, but the dress accentuated the right spots to make up for it. My hair was pulled back in a single braid, and I wore black lipstick and eyeshadow.

My interviewer, Caligula, called my name and I was waved on stage. I gripped my hands into fists to keep them from shaking. 'Stage fright is going to be the death of me one of these days,' I thought, then recalled a certain stage play a few lifetimes back and reconsidered. 'Actually, I guess it already has been.' Oddly, that macabre thought did wonders for calming my nerves.

"My, my, Ashley, you look gorgeous," Caligula said as I reached center stage.

"Thank you, Cal." I gave a quick twirl, letting the diamonds catch the light and shine.

We sat and the interview began. "Now, from what I've heard, you wanted to take part in these Games. Is that true?"

I shook my head. "It's not. No one in their right minds would want to fight for their lives like this."

Caligula stumbled for a moment, but recovered admirably. "But you went door to door in your district, asking people to vote for you. That sounds like someone eager to play to me."

"District 12 is my home. I love it, and I love the people in it, and I couldn't watch as they tore themselves up trying to decide who to vote for. So I made the decision for them. I gave them an easy out, so their hearts wouldn't break."

The crowd went "awww".

"That's very admirable of you," Caligula said, wiping a false tear from his eye. I was quickly starting to dislike him. Everything from his fancy wig to his giant clown shoes screamed "fake" to me.

"Thank you, but I don't plan on dying in the arena. I'm going to survive and return as the Victor."

"Hoho," Caligula laughed. "Such confidence! And not without merit, either. You scored a ten in your evaluation, putting you tied for first place amongst all the contestants." The only other Tribute to score a ten was Victorinus, the District 2 male, whose name I only remember because of how presumptuous it sounded. "However, you didn't show up for two of your training days. No one seems to know what you can do, just that you're very good at it." He leaned in towards me. "Please, could you give us a hint?"

I leaned in to meet him. "But Cal, I already have. The Games are going to turn out just like the training days; my opponents won't see me, or what I can do, until they're already dead." I smiled sharp and deadly as I sat back up. The crowd cheered in response. I was asked a few more questions, but they weren't important. I had already made my impression on the crowd. I walked offstage to the sound of cheers and was soon replaced by Taylor. He talked about why he volunteered for the Games and exactly what he thought about them. He ended up being booed offstage. I shook my head and thought that he could really use some lessons in tact; the people of the Capitol clearly didn't like him denigrating their favorite form of entertainment.

12) I was dressed in a thick, zip-up hoodie, a light undershirt, warm pants, a belt, and thick socks and boots as I rose into the arena. I rose up, and up, and up, and up, until I finally peaked and surveyed my new surroundings. The twelve of us were spread in a circle near the bottom of a relatively shallow bowl, with the Cornucopia positioned in the center. The air was thin and cold, even with the jacket, and I couldn't see anything over the lip of the bowl. My best guess was that we were in a crater at the top of a (hopefully) dormant volcano. The Tribute to my left was the girl from District 4; to my right was the boy from 1. Both were Careers. Clearly the Gamemasters wanted to get rid of their dark horse competitor early. The closest weapon to me was a sword; not just any sword either, I noticed, but a katana. How fortuitous for me, as that was the style of blade I had the most experience with.

The moment the countdown hit zero I was off, straight in the direction of the blade. Unfortunately my neighbor from District 1 had a similar idea, and he reached it at the same time I did. There was no way I could wrestle it from him; he towered over me by almost a foot and bulged with muscle. I let him reach for the weapon, and in the time it took for him to lean down and grab it I landed a solid punch to his throat. He staggered backwards and I followed, hooking my foot around his leg and bringing him to one knee. I launched my own knee into his jaw, hoping to get lucky and snap his neck, but he proved to be resilient enough to tank the blow. Finally having a chance to retaliate he swung at me with the hand carrying the sword, but his attack was slow and heavily advertised. I stepped into the blow, smacked him on the wrist, and grabbed the sword as it dropped. A fast draw into an iai strike, and he wasn't a threat anymore.

A quick glance around showed that I wasn't in any immediate danger, but I needed more than just a weapon. The closest backpack was… of course. It looked like all the backpacks had been placed in the center of the Cornucopia, while the weapons were spread out closer to the Tributes. A move undoubtedly intended to encourage more blood to be spilt early on. Still, I couldn't expect help from sponsors, so I needed as many supplies as I could get. A girl attacked me as I made my way towards the center; if I had to guess I'd say she was from District 11, but I couldn't remember. She didn't survive long enough to slow me down. I threw the first pack I came to over my shoulders and kept running straight. No one else was dumb enough to get in my way, and soon I was over the lip of the crater. It grew increasingly obvious that my earlier theory had been correct; before and below me, a great mountain sloped downwards. I kept moving; I'd need to find shelter soon, and I wanted to be far away from the peak when I found it.


	6. Fragments of Gods I

This story is AU starting at the end of Chapter 129 (or is it 130; SQ's chapter numbering can get confusing to talk about).

* * *

Fragments of Gods, or Shikako's Ever-Growing Rock Collection

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Something inside yanked and tore me away.

The world faded away, leaving only the black. I was lost in it, completely and utterly. My last minutes flashed before me. The cultists had cuffed me, dragged me to an altar, and covered me in blood. I was to be a sacrifice, to die so that their god could come into this world. My stomach ached from where I'd been run through. I could still feel the blood leaking out of it. I could feel how the staff pressed against my insides as I was hoisted in the air.

It had hurt, and I'd been terrified at the time but… I'd been to the brink of death and back before. Older memories arose, memories of collapsing from chakra exhaustion, of being run through by a sword and losing all sense of self, of nearly suffocating from the Kyuubi's chakra, and even all the way back to the first, sudden death. There had been almost no warning for it; I was there one moment, and gone the next. I still didn't want to die, but after besting it so many times I wasn't as scared of it as I used to be. I remembered my family and friends, everyone I'd come to love in my time in Konoha. I remembered my broken boys; Naruto's sunny smile hiding immense pain and Sasuke's cold façade protecting the warmest heart. I remembered Shikamaru's cunning intellect in contrast with his youthful naïveté, and Ino's need to make the world around her, and the people in it, a better place. What happened, happened, and if it was my time to die, at least I knew the world would be in good hands. Even if I'd never done any good for it.

My stomach throbbed one last time before fading away, replaced by a burning in my throat. I'd failed so many times in my life. I made Sakura fail her genin exam, I saddled Ino with a piece of Orochimaru, I took Shikamaru's arm from him. Aoba died while I watched, all because of my decisions. They'd strapped me to a table and made me drink his blood! At first all I'd wanted to do was survive, but somewhere along the way the idea of maybe making the world a better place became more important than that. But I'd nothing but make it worse.

There was so much in the world that I loved, and I'd hurt all of those things at some point in my life. I'd tried to fix my mistakes, to undo the damage I'd done, but I'd only made things worse. This world threw everything it could at me, and in my powerlessness the best I could do was struggle in vain, impotent rage.

 _Do not go gentle into that good night_ , the poets say. _Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, rage, rage against the dying of the light._ I wasn't done! This couldn't be the end!

I stood in darkness and defiance of death. I still had things to do. I still had people I loved, and if my love only hurt them, then I'd just have to find a way to fix that. They deserved that. They deserved so much more than that, but I'd give them what I could.

I wasn't alone, I realized. Something else was in the black with me. It took the shape of violence and cruelty, searing my soul with ice cold fingers. It was wrongwrongwrong to look at, but at the same time it wasn't as bad as I remembered. In the temple, the horror of the _thing_ that pushed against the walls of reality had been soul-rending and near-absolute. What stood across from me was only a sliver of that.

"Are you disappointed you couldn't break me?" I asked it, finally finding my voice.

The sliver-thing _shifted_ and suddenly my whole body ached. My legs felt weak and my arms and hands twitched, every muscle spasm carrying a burst of pain. It was like the time I crashed from soldier pill overuse after fighting Gaara. Actually, it was exactly like that, and it brought to mind feelings of contentment and the thrill of a challenge.

Did this sliver-thing only communicate through pain?

When the shaking finally stopped, when it finished "speaking", I replied, "You see me as a challenge?"

The pain and memories of an over-enthusiastic pat on the back from Gai confirmed that I was understanding it correctly.

This sliver-thing was a piece of Jashin that got cut off from the rest. If it got free, I _knew_ it would murder, destroy, and terrorize as much of the world as it could. And yet it was content to be remain with me? "Why would you want that?"

Lightning lanced up my arm. I remembered taunting Aoi Rokushou into making mistakes, but this time there was something new attached to the memory, something that didn't come from me. Disapproval. Discontentment. Boredom. It is easy to destroy the weak, I understood, but it is satisfying to destroy the strong.

"How can you think that? Especially when you killed children and innocent villagers to fuel the ritual that brought you here!"

Choking on a poorly swallowed konpeito. Killing the weak was like eating candy: cheap and easy pleasure. "That's digusting. And it's not going to happen again." There was no way I was letting this monster loose. I'd keep it here, trapped in the black with me forever if need be.

The sliver-thing gave no appearance of moving, and yet the space between slowly grew smaller. As it approached, it spoke. The black mixed with red and an inverted moon appeared in the sky. My throat and mouth dried until they cracked and words became impossible. I did my best to ignore the old, lingering fears and stare the sliver-thing down, but it was hard to look at. It was killing the sound trio in the forest, it was terrifying a man in a prison cell until he spilled everything he knew, it was humiliating a Logistics-nin who had insulted my brother. It was ideas and thoughts given shape by memories, and it was none of that at all. I had no idea how to fight it, but I wasn't going to back down.

A sudden burst of light briefly blinded me. As it faded it dragged the red of the Tsukuyomi world with it, until all that remained was a ball of light floating between myself and the sliver-thing. A solitary, tiny, remnant star that burned a dark green. Gelel, or whatever was left of it, sang its song again, just for me. I felt relief for what felt like the first time in eons. At least I wouldn't be fighting this battle alone.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The ritual hadn't finished, but it had started, and that was enough. As the final sacrifice, I was meant to be the doorway to allow Jashin into the world. The moment I disrupted the ritual, when my failed seal violently decomposed and wiped out the village, that doorway slammed shut. But the ritual had started, and a small bit of Jashin had slipped through and settled inside me. The deer of my summoning contract had saved me at the last moment, whisking me away to their home and healing my body, but they could do nothing about my slowly decreasing chakra reserves. For that, they returned me to Konoha and left me in Tsunade's care. All this I learned after it happened.

When I finally awoke three days later, it was to a mildly annoyed Hokage checking up on me. For me, the past few days had been a constant battle of wills between the sliver of Jashin and myself and Gelel until the sliver-thing had grown weak enough to suppress.

I gave my report then and there, and it was mostly true. I just didn't feel the need to mention that a piece of a blood god had gotten stuck inside my soul. I had it under control, now, so it wasn't an issue. Unfortunately, Tsunade didn't get where she was in life by being an idiot.

She pulled a container out of her pocket and tossed it on my chest. Inside was a blood-red stone tinged with black, not too different in shape from my Gelel stone. "We found that in your fourth chakra gate," she said. "It was draining your chakra faster than you were replenishing it. Care to explain why your chakra system likes to sprout crystals?"

She left me with little choice but the truth. Tsunade wasn't happy about it, and ordered several tests to ensure it wasn't going to endanger the village, but she did let me keep the stone.

A few days of visits from family and friends later, and I was finally released from the hospital. Sitting in a training field on the edge of the village, I finally took the time to test her new stone. _Technically_ , I wasn't supposed to; I was still supposed to be resting, and I wasn't supposed to test this without ANBU supervision. But I was confident I could handle anything it could send my way, now.

Press and pull, just like with Gelel, and in an instant the clearing lit up. I could already sense the natural energy and chakra in my surroundings, but now it was bright with something new. Immediately I knew what I was sensing: life energy. And if I could sense it...

I reached out with my will and poked the life energy inside me and it moved. If I could sense it, I thought, grinning, then I could manipulate it. Plans and ideas rapidly formed in response to this new ability, all the ways I could use it in the future. But a part of me hadn't forgotten the cost. I hoped beyond hope that it would be worth it.


	7. Fragments of Gods II

Seals were, in essence, jutsu in written form. A medium, usually blood or specially made ink, was used to carry chakra. That medium was physically twisted in all the right ways to force the chakra into the shapes necessary for a certain result. Of course, chakra had a spiritual and mental aspect which both complicated and simplified matters. Most importantly, it allowed complex movements to be replaced by simple symbols with meaning to the seal's writer.

Life energy was not chakra, and so making seals that manipulated life energy necessitated throwing away my predispositions and starting from scratch. First and foremost, life energy didn't twist into jutsu the way chakra did. Which was not to say it was useless, only that it had to be used in different ways. Secondly, ink didn't conduct life energy like it did chakra. Life energy traveled through things that were alive, or used to be. Blood worked, and was what I usually used, but skin, flesh, bone, wood, and vines all worked as well. Chakra and natural energy also conducted life energy, but you couldn't create structures out of pure chakra (unless you condensed it into crystal form, but that was far beyond my ability) and chakra-saturated substances were extremely inefficient. It was fitting that a power I'd gained from a god of pain and violence could only feasibly be used by hurting and killing other living things.

All this I'd learned through experimentation in the years since I stole a sliver of a god. Now, as the Elemental Nations prepared for war against Madara, I planned to put that knowledge to use. We needed every advantage we could get.

It had taken me two days of searching the forests around Konoha to find a clearing that worked for my purposes. It took another fifteen hours of taking measurements and scribbling diagrams and formulae furiously across three different notebooks before I pulled the large scroll off my back and began drawing out a seal.

I'd long ago learned how to include a chakra element in my seals, but only the basic five at first. Advanced elements, made by mixing two different basic elements, were more difficult to figure out. Most ninja couldn't produce advanced elements; if they tried to mix, for example, fire and earth chakras, the two would interfere with each other. At best, they'd cancel each other out; at worst… well that was considerably more violent. However, some people possessed a gene that allowed them to mix two specific elements constructively, rather than destructively, in order to produce a new one. But it wasn't until I had an opportunity to work alongside Tenzou for a while and study his chakra system while he used his jutsu that I finally understood how it worked. It only took a few days after that for me to make my first wood style seal. It was worth it, though, because watching Tenzou in action made me finally understand why wood style was such a big deal; it was the only thing I had ever seen that could create life energy from chakra. (I knew, in a scholarly sense, that sex created life, and thus life energy, but… ick. No thanks. I was pretty sure it worked differently, but I had no desire to study it closely to find out).

I was still working on separating the chakra-to-life-energy component of the chakra-to-living-wood of wood style, but for now I'd have to make do. It took about a half hour to create the seal, and another half hour to double- and triple-check it, but finally I was ready. I rolled up the scroll and stood. With one end set on the ground, the scroll still came up to my chest. I thought of the name I'd made for this, the name I'd worked into the seal, that described what it was for as much as what it would do, and readied my chakra.

"Sealing Technique: Wood Style: Forest Surrounding a Home."

The scroll sunk into the ground, ink blossoming from it and spreading beyond the trees. The earth shifted and rumbled and the trees moved and grew. The clearing shrunk and shifted until I stood in the center of a four-meter-diameter circle. Blades of grass flowed in the wind, moving almost imperceptibly until I was surrounded by Fibonacci spirals. Branches above and roots below stretched and connected, growing into a single, massive structure. Vines draped up and down tree trunks and along the ground, gathering an arm's length from the center. Moss bent and curved around trees, forming rings that stretched to the canopy like rungs on a ladder. Even the mycelia of nearby fungi were worked into the design, stretching along and between roots like a massive spiderweb.

A few months earlier, Tsunade had given me access to some of the Senju clan's writings on sealing, including some written by Mito-sama herself. It shook my views on sealing almost as much as that first conversation with Jiraiya had. Two things in particular stood out. The first was an entirely new way of looking at seal design. Seals usually took the shape of symbols and designs on a surface, but if all those figures were for was to guide and twist chakra into certain shapes, there was no reason it had to be two dimensional. If you used a sufficiently conductive solid substance, it was perfectly possible to create three-dimensional seals. For their constructions, the Uzumaki clan favored a specially-made clay that was easy to mold when wet and sturdy when dry. The Village Hidden by Whirlpools was as formidable and feared as it was not because it was covered in seals, but because its buildings, and even the layout of the village itself, _were_ seals. The moment you stepped foot in their village, you entered their domain. And they'd had plenty of time to prepare.

I had used my first seal to precisely alter the landscape around me to create a second, three-dimensional seal that would channel life energy through the living organisms around me. Creating a seal that itself created another seal was possibly the most technically complicated thing I'd ever done, and the slightest imprecision could have drastic side effects, but it was necessary for what I wanted.

The second earth-shaking discovery that came from reading Mito-sama's notes was that I wasn't the first to experiment with life energy and seals. The Uzumaki clan had managed to glean enough knowledge of life energy to create a certain artifact that was powered by the life energy of whoever used it.

Standing in the newly-altered clearing, I stripped off my jacket and shirt, leaving only my bandages and dozens of seals. I might've been embarrassed if not for the fact that I knew no one was around for at least a mile. I sealed my clothes and supplies in hammerspace, and all that remained in the clearing was myself and a cage holding a small rabbit I'd caught earlier. There was a storage seal directly over my heart, directly over my Gate of Death, and from it I pulled a mask shaped like a demon. Shivering, I placed it on the bare dirt in the very center of the seal. That autumn air sure was brisk, I tried to convince myself.

There was one final step before the seal could be activated.

The cage around the rabbit was sealed away and the animal quickly grabbed before it could escape. It struggled briefly as I grasped its head and body, until a quick twist in opposite directions ended its suffering. Working quickly, I pulled out a kunai and carefully poured the creature's blood between the ends of the vines in a specific shape. A triangle, containing a circle and a single line, because symbols with meaning could replace complex movements and that symbol meant Death for me. When the rabbit finally bled dry I was done. All I needed was freshly spilled blood, the rest of it was useless and was placed in hammerspace.

Life energy was a limited resource; you were born with a certain amount of it, you used a little everyday through the process of living, and when you ran out you died. As such, I'd taken to measuring life energy in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, etc. of a person's life that it allowed for. (It wasn't the most precise measuring system, different actions and different people used life energy at different rates, but it was approximate and still a work in progress). I poured a few seconds of my own energy into the seal to activate it. The rabbit blood, still fresh with life energy, worked as a catalyst, cutting down how much I needed to use.

The instant the seal began to do its work I leapt back. The air above the mask shimmered and twisted. Space itself bent inwards and outwards, stretching and calling to another world. A figure appeared to answer the summons, clothed in white with a blade in its mouth and fires at its edge. The vines, previously settled on the ground, lashed out and wrapped around the figure. Their purpose wasn't to bind but to nurture, channeling life energy from the surrounding plants directly into the god of death, sustaining his presence for that much longer.

I expected to feel terror, but I didn't. The ice cold grip of fear was instead replaced by an overwhelming sense of weariness and the desire to simply lie down and not get up again. I ran chakra through my system to wake myself up and it partially worked, but the soul-deep weariness of a long life remained.

"Lost spirit." The Shinigami's mouth didn't move, nor did his voice travel through the air between us, and yet somehow I heard him anyway. Its voice struck straight to my soul and rose to my ears from there. "Have you come at last to rest?"

When I first came up with this plan, I hadn't been sure whether I'd need to use communication or violence to get what I wanted, but I was glad the Shinigami seemed inclined towards the former. "Half of the soul of a being named Kurama was sealed within you over a decade ago. I've called you here to request his release."

"A request? Most who summon me make demands and give orders. Few have bothered to simply ask."

"It seemed like the polite thing to do." I was making small talk with the god of death. When did this become my life?

"You've learned some manners since we last met, little godling." Wait, what? When had we met before? "I suppose I should respond in kind." The Shinigami's shape flickered and folded in and out, flashing impossible colors before coming to rest as a black robed skeleton carrying a scythe. "Is this more comfortable for you?"

On the one hand, no it wasn't. If I hadn't had far too much experience with the impossibilities of gods, my brain probably would have shut down from what I'd just witnessed. But on the other hand… kinda, yeah. Despite my years of life in Konoha, my mental image of death was still heavily influenced by the traditions of my first life. He (did the Shinigami have a gender? Was he technically an it?) actually looked like Death to me now, and that was a tiny bit easier for me to deal with.

Still, apparently good manners had gotten me this far, so I decided to keep it up. "How about you take whatever form _you're_ most comfortable in?"

"Don't mind if I do," he said. "You're such a thoughtful host." His shape twirled once more, collapsing inwards and downwards until it settled as… a black dog? Not even a particularly monstrous dog, just a knee-high, vaguely wolfish mutt. The only thing even slightly off-putting about it was its glowing gold eyes.

I took a moment to process that. Then I took another moment, then one more just to be safe. I was uncomfortably used to the actions of gods attempting to break my brain, but they didn't usually do it through sheer absurdity. The preferred form of the being responsible for the end of everything was a puppy. Was it bad that I wanted to pet him?

I noticed the grass around the Shinigami was already dead, a patch of brown spreading out from the center. It was a firm reminder that I didn't have time to waste with further pleasantries or absurdities. Straight to the point, then. "I'm prepared to make a deal for Kurama's Yin half." I pulled out a scroll from my kunai pouch. "Part of one soul for part of another."

Mito-sama's sealing notes had been the final key in cracking Orochimaru's curse seal. With them, Jiraiya and I had managed to isolate the piece of Orochimaru's soul from the rest of the seal and remove it. Once it was gone, unraveling the rest of the seal became possible, but the removed soul had to go somewhere. We had designed a new seal to contain the pieces as we removed the cursed seal from Sasuke, Anko, and a number of prisoners from Sound. There were over a dozen in the scroll I held. Tsunade did _not_ know I had taken the scroll, and she'd probably kill me when she found out, but that would have to wait until after the war. As long as we kept the world from ending, I'd take whatever punishment I was given.

"A soul for a soul is the traditional offer," the Shinigami confirmed. "Hmm. No thanks." He reached his back leg up to scratch behind his ear. "What use have I for soul pieces? All things die eventually, even the universe itself. Not even the White Snake is exempt from that."

This was not going how I'd hoped. "Orochimaru is a man who seeks immortality and has nearly gotten it. He spits in the face of death. You're the kami of death, doesn't that bother you?"

"Not really. I don't particularly care if he dies now or a millennium from now. Eventually he'll slip up and lose his life, and when he does I'll see his soul off to the Pure Land where he'll await reincarnation. Just like everyone else."

He didn't care? I'd assumed from his name that he was the spirit of death given shape, but if that were true then surely he'd be bothered when people didn't die when they were supposed to. It could be that he was just lazy, but that didn't fit what I knew of kami. If he truly didn't care, then maybe he was something else.

Then it hit me. "You're not just death. You're the cycle. Death, rebirth, and the travel between Pure and Impure Lands. You're the spirit of the whole process."

The Shinigami's ears pricked and his tongue flopped out of his mouth. "Very astute. Though it's more of a coil, really. There was a beginning, when the first light blazed forth in the sky, and there will be an end when the last star dies a quiet, cold death. I'm the only being that will see both ends of the coil, and all that concerns me is that it spirals on without interruption. Everything else is secondary at best."

I returned the scroll to my kunai pouch. "If you don't want a soul, what would be an acceptable trade?"

He leaned forward, face serious again. "I will reunite the two halves of the Fox, and I'll even throw in freeing the spirits of your former Hokages. But in return, you need to do something for me."

I gulped. What could such a powerful being need me to do that it couldn't do itself? When I asked as much, he replied, "the coil of life and death is meant to run in one direction. Clockwise, if you'll excuse the metaphor. Some of your chakra techniques that resurrect lives interfere, causing a soul to run counter-clockwise. Usually this sort of thing is nothing more than a mild nuisance, but the Edo Tensei is particularly problematic. I'll grant you a fraction of my power to aid you, but you need to use it to end the current summoner's plans and free the souls he's ensnared."

That was a far better deal than I could ever have hoped for. "The summoner is my enemy and I already planned on stopping him. You have a deal."

"Then it seems our interests align, Corpse Princess. Approach me and hold out your hand." Dead grass crunched beneath my feet, blades turned completely black and drained entirely of their life energy. Leaves in the canopy above shrunk and fell from branches, letting through beams of sunlight that slowly merged together, speckling the forest floor with patches of light and streaks of shadow. The draining only seemed to speed up as I stepped forward, until even the tree trunks appeared withered and weak. By the time I held out my hand, the vines that sustained the spirit's presence had shriveled to a hair's width. Moments before he disappeared, the Shinigami opened his mouth and dropped a single crystal stone the size of my finger into my palm. It was a swirl of equal parts black and white, mixing together to form the most intricate patterns.

"Alright," I said to no one as I stood alone in a dead patch of forest. "I'll add it to my collection."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

When the war began, the shinobi had been divided up between five different specialized divisions. I'd been put in charge of the Third Division's sealing team, under Kakashi-sensei. It was my job to figure out how to stop any zombie summons we came across for good.

The very first thing I noticed about the Edo Tensei summons was that they had no life energy. Immediately, I threw out dozens of half-formed plans. I turned my attention from Jashin's Sliver to the newest stone that hung around my neck. I'd had little opportunity to experiment with it, and all attempts thus far had produced zero results, but the Shinigami had said it was to be used to help stop the Edo Tensei. If it was going to be useful, now would be the time for it to do something. I cycled chakra through Death's Boon and took a second look at the reanimated Seven Swordsmen of the Mist.

They looked _wrong_. The crystal let me see people's souls, I realized with a start. I hadn't noticed it before because most people's souls look like their bodies do and tend to take up the same space. But the souls before me looked twisted and partial. I could see where they stretched in impossible directions, tunneling _through_ this world and into another one. I understood why the Shinigami didn't like this jutsu; it didn't just bring people from the afterlife into this life, it pulled them like taffy until they existed in two worlds at the same time.

I could also see how the soul was held in this world. A second soul existed in each of the summons, presumably from the person sacrificed to activate the jutsu, and the two souls were wrapped up and stitched together with miniscule threads of chakra. It was disgusting to look at, but it gave me an idea. If I could cut the threads that bound the souls together, then the summoned soul should snap back to the Pure Land like a rubber band.

"Kakashi-sensei," I said, using Gelel's Last Note to switch into my shadow state, "I think I have a plan." I shifted and stretched the shadows in my hand into the shape of a scythe. The shadow scythe was sharp and flexible enough to target the tiny threads, but more importantly, if I was going to play the role of Death's helper then I might as well look the part.


	8. Fragments of Gods III

Pakura of the Sand. Gari of the Stone. Uchiha Shisui. The seven most powerful non-living members of the Seven Swordsmen of the Hidden Mist. Daunting enemies, even if they weren't pseudo-immortal on top of everything else.

The first to fall was Zabuza's predecessor Juzo Biwa. With Zabuza's help, I managed to get in close enough for my shadow scythe to snake in and sever the chakra threads binding him to this world. For a moment of time, his unbound soul seemed to draw close. Then, as the last of the chakra I'd channeled through Death's Boon faded, I sensed him snap back through the tunnel between worlds and return to the Pure Land.

He'd stayed. For just a moment, he'd lingered in this world. Had he been attracted to me? To the power the Shinigami had gifted me? If so, could I use that? I cycled even more chakra through the crystal.

Shisui's Mangekyo was too powerful to be ignored so he had to be targeted next. As two of the few people who could keep up with the speed of Shisui's body flicker, Gai-sensei and Haku were leading the charge against him. Haku's ice mirrors littered the field, pulling double duty as points for him to fly between and shields against Shisui's powerful fire jutsu.

I lent Kakashi-sensei the Sword of the Thunder God, since he could put it to better use than I could at the moment, and subtly pointed him away from Shisui. I couldn't let the two of them meet; if Kakashi-sensei got caught in Kotoamatsukami it could change the tide of the whole war.

As Konoha's legendary lightning blade clashed with Mist's, I turned to the nearest ice mirror and caught Haku's attention.

"If you can freeze him in place for a moment," I told him, "I should be able to finish him off."

"That's easier said than done," was Haku's reply. "Gai-san's already opened the Third Gate, and we're still having trouble keeping up with him."

No kidding. Every second we spent talking, Shisui took out a dozen shinobi. He wasn't at Yellow Flash levels of speed, but for most people on the battlefield the difference didn't matter. Both were classified as "impossibly faster than me".

"You must have at least one ice jutsu that can hold him," I said.

"I do, but not for long."

"I just need a moment."

Haku nodded. "I think I can manage something. Get ready to move."

Before I could reply, he was gone. A dozen ice clones solidified on the battlefield and took to the mirrors, joining him in blurring across the field. I was straining every sense I had to keep up with the battle, and could only barely manage. Finally, after a few seconds of frantic, high-speed combat, three ice clones ganged up on Shisui, with one managing to catch him in a body lock.

"Ice Style: Ice Prison!" I had only moments to act. Shisui's body was already blazing, melting the ice that contained him and the clones. Right as the outer layer began to crack, letting wisps of steam leak through, I swung. My shadow sliced through ice, water, steam, flesh and chakra. Landing on my feet, I didn't even bother to turn around; my shadow state was fluid, so it was faster to just shift my shape so I was facing in the other direction. I reached back and _grabbed_ , with chakra and Death's power coursing through my shadowy limbs.

It was only after I touched his soul that I realized the full consequences of what I'd just done. I could see everything he had ever done, thought, or felt. Every precious or hated memory, every emotion and opinion, was all made aware to me. I felt how happy he was the day he graduated from the Academy. I felt his despair as his mother died of sickness in his arms, activating his Mangekyou for the first time. I saw the first time he fell in love with a woman, and the first time he made love to her, and the heartache that came when she left him.

In a single instant of time, I learned _who he was_.

It was extremely invasive, and I might have been more ashamed of what I'd just done if the link hadn't been two-way. He knew me as I knew him.

Will you help me, I pleaded as we hung in a moment of time.

Of course, he responded.

His soul snapped together, this time collecting in this world. The body he'd been using faded to ash and dust, but his soul remained, burning bright blue as a chakra ghost. The tunnel between this world and the next also remained, empty but present. It was more like a summoning contract now; Shisui was here because he agreed to be, and he could leave if he wanted to. I asked for him, and he answered.

No words passed between us. None needed to. We understood each other too well and our thoughts were the same. We had a war to fight.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

It took a bit of trial and error, but we managed to figure out what capabilities Shisui had as a chakra ghost. He existed as pure chakra bound to a soul; he didn't have a body, which meant no chakra coils to twist chakra through to create jutsu. He had his senses still, but his Sharingan was reduced in power to just enhanced vision. What he could do was share his chakra with me. Atop that, the soul-deep bond I'd forged when I brought him here meant he could instantly share his knowledge and memories of jutsu and fighting styles with me.

It was about as close to ghostly possession as one could get without actually being possessed.

I repeated the process of spirit summoning with each of the other zombies on the field. Some refused the offer and returned instead to the Pure Land, but most accepted. As the sun set I sat in the Third Division's camp, with Jinpachi's blastsword Shibuki strapped across my back and seven chakra ghosts surrounding me.

Night. The shadow of the planet settling over the land as it turned its face away from the sun. In theory, the only thing limiting the size of shadow a Nara could control was the amount of chakra they access to. I had access to the chakra of seven S-class shinobi, and not inconsiderable chakra reserves myself. I sent the plan on to HQ and, despite some reserves, they okayed it.

The moon was almost full, which made things more difficult. Sitting cross-legged in the dirt, I pooled my shadow around me. It was a wonderful idea, grabbing hold of the planet's shadow, but before I could do that I had to find it.

I mean it was _right there_ , I could see it with my eyes, but it wasn't registering with my chakra. I spread my shadow as wide and thin as I could before it broke, but I still couldn't sense the planet's shadow. It was like it was part of the scenery, a background feature, just another part of the landscape. Like it was—

Oh.

I gathered natural energy, transmuting my normal chakra into sage chakra, and there it was. It was massive, and I was less than a flea in comparison. There was no way I'd be able to capture the whole thing, but I could get enough. A small country's worth, with help.

I'd need to multitask if I wanted to keep this up. I Split myself, with one half focusing on gathering sage chakra and maintaining the jutsu while the other half attacked. I shifted into Shadow State and truly became the night.

Mifune's group was closest. They'd already fought and sealed two enemies, so I focused on the ones still free first. They were powerful, but they were already caught in my shadow. I was everywhere and nowhere, and they each fell before long. I gave most of them the same offer I'd given the others, and each one who accepted helped further fuel the jutsu.

By the time the sun had risen, there were only a handful of Edo Tensei summons left. About the same time, Naruto and Fu-chan finished their training with Killer Bee and took to the field, Naruto spamming Shadow Clones to wipe out the White Zetsu. Not long after that, Sasuke and his joint-village team of ANBU managed to locate the Edo Tensei's summoner and take him out.

By noon of the second day, the enemy's army consisted of, to the surprise of many (myself included, what the hell? A decade and a half of foresight and planning thrown out because I didn't make it to the ending before dying?) a reincarnated Madara Uchiha, Tobi, six former jinchuuriki under the Rinnegan's control, and Black Zetsu.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The battle was fought on an insane level. Two people should _not_ have been able to stand against an entire army filled with the world's strongest, and yet somehow they did. While the five Kage held off Madara, Kakashi-sensei, Gai-sensei and I caught up with Naruto, Fu-chan and Bee-san as they clashed with Tobi. All nine bijuu fought in a single battle; I wasn't sure that had ever happened before.

The Rinnegan seemed to bind the dead in a different fashion than the Edo Tensei had; severing their souls wouldn't be enough to send them back. I gave up on Shadow State and switched to wielding Shibuki (with Jinpachi constantly barking in my ear about how sloppy my form was; it was an explosive club, how did you wield it with more finesse than swing and boom?). With some advice from Nagato's ghost, we figured out the trick to freeing the jinchuuriki's bodies, and without the control rods or Bijuu they faded away.

The ensuing battle was grueling and, at least by shinobi standards, incredibly long. It stretched on through the day and into the night. Tobi was revealed to be Obito Uchiha, Madara defeated the five Kage and joined the battle, Chomei was captured, though I managed to save Fu's life with an infusion of Life Energy and medical chakra, and the Juubi was restored to an impartial state. Sasuke arrived on the battlefield the same time the rest of the army did and Team 7 was reunited. We managed to sever Madara and Obito's connection with the Juubi, and Obito and Kakashi disappeared to their shared Kamui dimension to fight and hash out their differences. I wished them the best.

That left two foes for the rest of us. Our first priority had to be limiting the movements of the Juubi. I let Shikamaru and Naruto handle the defenses while I prepared.

Step one required four of Deidara's explosive clay clones. Most clones didn't have the drawback (it was a drawback for me, at least) of returning unused chakra to the user that the Shadow Clone had, so they were much safer for me to use in a battle. Each clone was filled to the brim with chakra and given a large square of paper that contained my most powerful four-point barrier seal. It required a steady flow of chakra to be most effective, but I was fairly confident it would hold for a while. As I formed the clones, Rasa and Pakura prepared their own mixed element chakras to send my way.

Gold dust. It was present underground in minute quantities and was difficult to pinpoint, but I managed to gather enough for my needs. As my clones set up the barrier I pooled dust around the Juubi's neck and tails, then poured all the Scorch Style chakra Pakura had made into them. Eleven solid golden Buddha statues, each embossed with a number of seals, silently rose from the earth and locked the Juubi in place. Such a jutsu probably deserved a name, but I didn't have the time to come up with anything more creative than "Binding Technique: Eleven Great Buddha Statues".

My clones opened small gaps in the barrier for the army to enter through, leaving only Madara and the three members of Team Seven to fight outside.

"Only three this time? I'm almost insulted." Madara was a chatty opponent. Naruto liked to smack talk and argue with him and I didn't refuse him that; after all, it wasn't like we needed our words for anything else. We'd long since learned to fight alongside each other without needing to share our plans out loud.

I didn't bother with Shadow State; I'd managed to get Madara with my Shadow Scythe twice earlier, and each time I severed the chakra threads keeping his soul here he simply reconnected them. He was his own summoner now, and he wouldn't leave until he wanted to. Instead I started with sage mode, while Naruto pulled out the Kyuubi's golden chakra cloak and Sasuke summoned a partial Susanoo.

Sasuke struck first, firing an arrow coated in the fires of Amaterasu. It did little on its own, as Madara simply absorbed it with his Rinnegan, but it made enough distraction for Naruto to get in close. I stayed back to gather more gold dust and plan. The job of containing and sealing Madara was going to fall to me, the boys just needed to keep him busy until I could figure out how. A basic item storage seal wouldn't work; I'd used them on people before, but in theory, if you survived being sealed in one it wasn't hard to break out of from within. Likewise, I didn't think Sand's cloth binding jutsu would hold a monster like Madara.

I had a squadron of eighteen ghosts to instantaneously toss ideas around with; Dan, due to the fact that he had the most experience operating as a ghost, had been sent off to aid the five kage when we'd sensed them losing against Madara. It was slightly worrying that he'd never returned.

We decided to stay at range to begin with. Gengetsu and A each shared a jutsu with me. "Sage Jutsu: Black Lightning Style: Steam Imp." A chibified clone appeared, made of electrified water coated in a thin layer of oil. The electric charge added to the water caused the clone to explode faster and more often, turning it briefly into a thundercloud before it settled back as a clone again. Such a jutsu required a steady stream of chakra to remain active, which might have been crippling for the average shinobi and problematic for a Kage, but powering it with Sage chakra allowed it to run by absorbing natural energy on its own. I didn't need to focus on it at all, and instead could concentrate on gathering gold and spreading it just beneath the surface of the battleground.

I'd taken a jutsu described as an "infinite explosions ninjutsu" and made it even stronger. It was doing stuff like that that made my reputation as a mad bomber entirely my own fault.

I kept half an eye on the battle as I worked. Sasuke was using his Sharingan at full steam to fight up close alongside my clone without getting caught by friendly fire, while Naruto kept his distance and fired off clone weapons and chakra arms. Madara tried to drain chakra from my clone several times, but it always exploded before he got much out of it. I was a little surprised he wasn't turning to stone, considering the clone was powered by sage chakra, but I guess his chakra control was just that good. Eventually, he summoned the Animal Path's giant dog to fight my clone for him, a good choice considering it seemed to be equally unkillable.

As the battle continued, the combatants kept getting further and further away. I needed to stop preparing and start acting. I pulled out two handfuls of kunai and magnetized them with Toroi's version of Magnet Style, then grabbed them with Yashamaru's nearly-invisible chakra threads so I could control their flight path. Leaping forward, I hurled them in Madara's direction, spread out enough to make them hard to dodge completely. All my extra work proved unnecessary when he simply blocked them with his fan. This guy was supposed to be the boogeyman that terrified S-class ninja, how the hell was I overestimating him?

Well, it worked out for me. The kunai transferred their powerful magnetic fields to his fan, and through it to him. Gold dust tore out of the ground underneath his feet, aided by my own efforts to direct it, quickly clumping together until it buried Madara under a 5-meter-tall pyramid. "Golden Mausoleum." Gold was actually a pretty good chakra conductor, which meant I could make seals with it. Embossed on each face of the pyramid was a Four Symbols Seal, along with several additional seals to fortify and strengthen the pyramid itself.

Perhaps I hadn't overestimated him, because Madara, cloaked in his Full Body Susanoo, almost immediately broke out. Naruto and Sasuke could manage, but I had nothing that could fight on that scale. More importantly, it prevented me from getting close enough to plant seals on him. This fight would be a lot easier if we could do something about those eyes of his.

'Maybe we can.' Hizashi?

Two separate memories entered my mind, one when Hizashi received the Hyuuga clan's cursed seal, and one when he witnessed his son receive it. He didn't know how to cast it, but he had seen it, twice, both times through the eyes of the Byakugan. His memories kept surprisingly good detail of the seal, too. I guess both experiences had been traumatic enough to burn the images into his head.

Hanzo, Itachi and Jinpachi all had moderate experience with seals, so I shared _my_ knowledge of seals with the three of them and set them to reverse engineering the seal. If we could figure out how it worked, we could tweak it to work on the Sharingan, and maybe even the Rinnegan.

I pulled the nearby gold dust into hammerspace in case I needed it later. Drawing Shibuki, I joined Naruto, in full Kyuubi mode, and Sasuke, in Full Body Susanoo.

Mangetsu was a much better teacher, I decided as he took up mentally demonstrating how to wield my newest legendary blade. I swung upwards as I charged and the scroll unrolled far beyond the sword, covering Madara's Susanoo in a strip of explosive notes all the way up his leg. I didn't think he could actually feel through the jutsu, but the blast was still enough to throw him off balance.

Naruto followed up, capitalizing on his moment of weakness with a Bijuu Bomb to the face that knocked Madara to the ground. Sasuke leapt, Susanoo sword cloaked in the Chidori's lightning, and landed atop him, digging the blade a third of the way through the armored giant's neck.

It wasn't enough.

It was something, though.

Madara tossed him off and got back up, chakra reforming his giant's throat. We had pierced his Susanoo. A stronger lightning style attack could probably get even deeper.

A _finally_ caved and showed me how to do his Hell Stab. He'd been being stingy about it, wanting to keep some secrets in death, but it was the only thing that stood a chance of getting through Madara's armor.

Shibuki went back to the strap over my shoulder. I shifted my arm into Shadow State and formed it into a needle, before coating it in chakra. I wasn't as efficient or effective as A was (and he and Ameyuri kept arguing in my head about how best to sharpen something with lightning chakra, which didn't help) but it would have to do.

Gari shared a memory with me. Okay, I could mimic that.

Madara acted before I did, swinging both his swords directly at me. My lapse of attention nearly cost me, but Naruto and Sasuke rushed in to intercept. They slammed into each other, Sasuke's armor unraveling to wrap around Naruto's Kyuubi form, and landed directly in front of me, blocking Madara sword for sword.

I leapt onto the nearest tail, and from there made my way to their head. They were directly beneath me, floating in a sea of golden chakra. I wasn't sure how they could handle it; just being near so much chakra made the hairs on my arm and neck stand up.

"Get me close!" I shouted.

Swords and tails, bijuu bombs and black fire clashed with wings and swords and magatama while I struggled to hold on until I had an opening. Finally, one came.

The boys approached with a low feint, and Madara countered with a downward swing of both his swords. The boys rose up, swinging their own swords and knocking Madara's arms wide open. Tails lashed forwards to bind arms while their mouth went for his neck.

The hold wouldn't last more than moments, but it was enough for me. Madara's chakra blazed like an inferno throughout the entire giant, but I could still sense where it was thickest; right between the eyes.

I leapt and landed on his overly long nose. Short of smacking himself in the face, there was little he could do about me being there.

Well, I thought as he began weaving hand signs, I guess he could attack me himself.

I ran straight at him. As fire erupted from his mouth, gold dust poured out of hammerspace and formed a shield in front of me. I pulled my shadow needle arm back. With a twist of will, a Touch Blast seal appeared on my elbow. I carefully modified the explosion parameters so it pushed all of the force out away from my arm, launching it forward like a rocket. As the fire cleared, I _stretched_ , pushing my arm through the newly solid gold wall, through chakra armor, and into undead flesh. The moment it connected, barbs burst from my arm, catching him from within as I. Kept. Pushing. Straight through and out the other side.

His Susanoo began dissolving the moment it was cut off from its chakra supply. Which meant I was quickly left without a nose to stand on. I spared a moment to let out a few choice curse words at my forgetfulness, then shifted completely into Shadow State in order to survive the fall. It proved unnecessary, however, because Naruto and Sasuke caught me out of the air and set me down gently, joining me at eye level moments later as I shifted back.

Madara hit the ground laughing. He was enjoying this fight. He enjoyed _fighting_. People like him were why I didn't believe we could ever have world peace, because eventually someone would come around and start a fight just because it was fun. I mean, don't get me wrong, I got an adrenaline rush from battle, the same as the next person. But at the end of the day, I'd choose safety and peace over danger and war in a heartbeat.

Well then, we'd have to deal with him. He was the obstacle we had to overcome to buy the world some momentary peace.

Itachi, Jinpachi, and Hanzo were still working on the Caged Bird Seal, with Hizashi and Nagato pitching in tidbits about their respective eyes when asked. My chibi clone and Madara's dog were still repeatedly killing each other. In the distance, my clay clones were still maintaining the barrier around the Juubi and the rest of the army was still fighting it. For now. We needed time to finish the seal, but I wasn't sure we had time to spare.

Well, there was nothing to do about it but try.

The battle recommenced with Madara rushing into taijutsu range. With a few moves, he'd sent all three of us flying and, eyes burning with chakra, turned towards the nearest ghost. My bond with the ghosts was a direct connection of souls that had a range we hadn't tested, but which seemed to be pretty vast. Nonetheless, whether out of habit or desire, they had mostly followed me around as I fought, staying close even though they didn't need to. It didn't really matter whether they were close or not, since nothing could hurt them. They were nothing but chakra and souls, completely intangible.

Madara lashed out, grabbing the ghost of Chukichi by the throat.

Shit. I'd forgotten. The Rinnegan's Human Path had the ability to grab and remove people's souls, while the Preta Path could absorb chakra. Chukichi was gone in seconds, chakra drained and soul sent back to the Pure Land. Jinin, out of outrage and battle instincts, attempted to strike at Madara, but he was grabbed in a lock and soon followed Chukichi.

Their presences disappeared from my senses. We'd been linked, soul to soul, and Madara had ripped that link apart. And while I knew they were going back to a place where they ought to be happy, it still hurt to lose them. But I was in the middle of a fight and didn't have time to deal with that, so I shoved all my pain into the black. I'd deal with it later.

The ghosts pulled back. I _ordered_ them back. I'd screwed up and it'd cost me, but I intended to learn from my mistakes. I divvied them into groups of four and had them spread out, with Itachi, Hanzo, Jinpachi and Hizashi each in different groups.

I leapt forward and swung Shibuki off my shoulder and down, blowing Madara into the ground. He retaliated, but I turned to shadows and became as untouchable as he was. I was a vaguely human-shaped mass of shadows, blades and spears appearing from any part of my body at any moment. The only constant, Shibuki, clashed against his metal fan while shadows and explosions ripped at ash and dust that masqueraded as flesh and ripped right back. I aimed for eyes and joints and other weak spots, while he favored sweeping, powerful blows that destroyed large parts of me at once. We tore each other apart, mirroring the actions of dog and clone in the background. As I succeeded in blowing his weapon out of his hand (well, arm; his hand was technically still attached to it), Madara finally seemed to get bored with the futility of our fight.

"Deva Path!" Despite my incorporeal form, I was still sent flying. Naruto and Sasuke, who'd been hanging back while the two of us tore each other apart, jumped in to take my place. Madara ignored them in favor of the nearest group of ghosts. His first target was the smallest chakra source in the group, Pakura. She was gone in seconds. The other three fell back, Mangetsu and A keeping themselves between Itachi and Madara at all time, but that just made them targets. He managed to catch both of them at the same time.

Being as both of his captives were S-class, Kage-level ninja, it took Madara a bit longer to drain them dry. Enough extra time that all of Team Seven caught up to him as he finished. Sasuke went low, lightning-covered sword aimed at his knees. Naruto went high, Rasengan aimed at the back of his head. I got the middle, Shibuki striking his chest the instant the other two were out of its range. As the explosion sent Madara rocketing off his feet, I pulled the next strip of explosive notes onto Shibuki's platform. Or tried to, at least, but nothing came out. I checked, and it hadn't jammed. I'd run out of explosive notes.

Oh god. Kiba could _not_ find out about this. He'd never let me live it down.

If I had to, I could substitute explosive notes with Deidara and Gari's Blast Style chakra until I had a chance to whip up a scroll covered in Touch Blasts and reload. Just in case, though, I decided to fall back for the next assault, mentally pulling Itachi to my side and supporting Naruto and Sasuke with gold dust from a distance until Madara caught and wiped out Hizashi's entire group.

I'd lost half my ghost squadron. We couldn't keep dawdling. 'What have you got?' I asked my seal team.

They'd managed to successfully decipher the Caged Bird Seal, but they were stuck on altering it to work on the Rinnegan. I surrounded myself in a dome of gold dust and set to work helping them, relying on the senses of my ghosts to keep me safe as I focused on sealing.

Naruto and Sasuke teamed up to keep Madara away from me and my ghosts while we worked, trusting me to have a plan. I did my best not to let them down.

Aside from tweaking the seal to work for the Rinnegan, there were a few other difficulties. For one, the original seal required a lot of set up before it could be placed. I would have to personalize the seal enough that I could set it with just chakra and will, because there was no way Madara would stay still long enough for me to set it up the slow way.

For another, I was surprised to discover that another clan in Konoha had experimented with life energy in sealing. It wasn't a huge aspect of it, but the seal monitored the life energy levels of the person it was on, and as soon as they hit zero it activated and destroyed their eyes before fading away. We needed to make sure the seal could be placed on someone who didn't have life energy, and wouldn't just fade the moment it was placed.

We changed the seal so that it would monitor both chakra _and_ life energy, making it so it would activate if it sensed no life energy, but wouldn't fade so long as it sensed chakra in the body.

Rasa's presence disappeared from my mind. I swore (I'd done that a lot this battle, which probably spoke best for how screwed we were). The gold dome held, though, as Toroi was still present to supply Magnet Style chakra. I didn't have Rasa's experience and memories anymore, but I could wing it.

The rest of his group followed soon after. As Jinpachi faded away, he used his last moments to send me everything he knew about caring for, fixing and cleaning Shibuki.

It was actually very touching, considering how angry he'd been when I'd first picked up the sword. It made his death the hardest to push into the black. I held on to the memories, though.

Itachi gave me a heads-up moments before fire engulfed the dome, giving me just enough time to slip underground before it began to melt. I felt him disappear as I resurfaced next to Naruto and Sasuke. I'm a little ashamed to admit I wasn't as grieved by his loss as I was by the others; he still terrified me a tiny bit.

The new Caged Phoenix Seal was as ready as it was going to be; I would have liked a few hours to double- and triple-check it, but if we all got what we wanted we wouldn't be fighting a war. I'd personalized it as much as possible, removing unnecessary things like the ability to activate it remotely, and modifying other parts to be more efficient, or just in ways that worked the same, but made more sense to me. I was pretty sure I could apply it if I could just touch his forehead.

Toroi, Nagato, Gengetsu, and Hanzo lined up in front of me. Without any Blast Style users left to power it, Shibuki wasn't very useful. I tossed it into hammerspace.

Hanzo sent me his strongest Fire Style ninjutsu. Sasuke saw what I was doing and added his black Amaterasu flames to the inferno. Half an instant later, Naruto enhanced it further by tossing in a Wind Style: Rasenshuriken. Madara absorbed it without a scratch, but it gave the seven of us a chance to get close uninterrupted.

We rushed forward in a wedge formation, Sasuke and Naruto behind me and the ghosts in front. Madara would go for them first, aiming to weaken me, but they'd hopefully distract him long enough for me to seal him.

It was, in my defense, their idea to act as bait.

My first attempt to apply the seal failed because I didn't completely visualize it. The second failed because it was dodged. By attempt number three, only Nagato was left. Caught in Madara's grip, he sent every last scrap of chakra he could my way, which I funneled into a burst of pure speed.

I got him. Chakra flared between my palm and his forehead, shining bright enough to be nearly blinding for an instant.

Madara dropped, crying out as his eyes repeatedly collapsed and reformed. I was quietly proud that I'd actually made him scream in pain. He had seemed too strong for that.

He proved me right moments later as he stood back up. Naruto grabbed me with a chakra arm and pulled me out of the way of Madara's follow-up attack. The seal was still active, his eyes were still unusable, but he seemed to have adapted to the pain.

(Interestingly, I spared half a moment's attention to my chakra sense and noticed that, despite the Rinnegan being sealed, his dog was _still_ present and fighting my clone. I wasn't sure they'd ever stop. Not unless something stopped them.)

"Incredible!" Madara was talking again. He'd been talking throughout the battle, about how futile our attempts were and about how he knew our weaknesses. I'd mostly been ignoring him in favor of _actually fighting_. This time, though, I listened. "Uchiha! Uzumaki! Nara! The three of you together have pushed me further than even the five Kage did. Your teamwork has surpassed their combined might. I declare that you are a genuine threat to my plans. Which means I can no longer afford to play with you. It's time for me to end this."

Arrogant prick. Not undeservedly, I'll admit, but he still had an ego the size of the moon. Which kinda made his compliment a little intimidating. Like we were somehow more than what we appeared to be. Like we weren't just struggling desperately to survive.

I mean, Naruto and Sasuke might be, they were pretty amazing, but me? I was throwing everything I had at him, and he just kept getting back up. I wasn't sure how much more I had left.

Madara made the next move. "Wood Style: Deep Forest Emergence!" Roots, branches and leaves erupted from the ground, stretching and growing towards us. Naruto and Sasuke both went big, crashing into the rising forest with fang and blade. I did my best to remain mobile, using Shadow State sparingly. I didn't have access to ridiculous amounts of chakra anymore, so I had to be careful. Which is not to say I didn't leave a few Touch Blasts here and there as I leapt between branches, because I couldn't do nothing.

Really, it wasn't too bad. We were Konoha-nin, putting us in a forest just gave us a new advantage.

I retracted that claim when the dragons showed up. Not made of fire, ironically, but of wood, and capable of draining chakra. I wondered how well they burned.

I sensed one circle around and attack from my back. I let it skim past me, staying just close enough to lash out and plant a seal on it. It was an Incendiary Burst, a Touch Blast modified to be mostly heat and only a little boom.

I was a little disappointed at the reminder that, no, living wood doesn't burn very well. There's too much water in it.

Well, I could do something about that.

Or I could if I wasn't interrupted. An armor-clad fox tore the trees, crushing the dragon's head and grabbing me out of the air. They dropped me atop their head as Naruto powered up a Bijuu Bomb. Sasuke added a sword coated in black flames to it, literally stabbing it through it (because why not, it wasn't like this battle wasn't already ridiculous), and it tore a blazing path straight through to the forest's summoner before being batted aside.

Madara stood atop a massive wooden ogre wrapped around by another dragon. I was left to hold on tight, _again_ , while giants clashed underneath me. The ogre was sturdy; Sasuke's Susanoo swords left only shallow gouges that quickly closed back up. Even coating the blade in lightning or black fire only helped a little. In response it struck with its fists, managing to crack Sasuke's armor in several places and even catch and return a Bijuu Bomb Naruto had launched at almost point-blank range. I only managed to hang on by shifting into Shadow State and wrapping myself around an ear like a misplaced hair tie.

Madara was pushing us and we were losing ground. One. Two. Three. Crack. A series of successive blows to the chest was finally too much, and Susanoo's armor shattered. The dragon lifted up from the ogre's shoulder and shot forward, wrapping around the newly-exposed golden chakra of Naruto's Kyuubi Mode.

Both boys were, at least temporarily, out of the picture. It wasn't the most opportune position or timing, but I had to act.

I reformed and leapt atop the dragon. Even in Shadow State, just touching the wood pulled at my chakra. I moved quickly, minimizing contact with the dragon until I could leap one final time onto the ogre's head.

"This is getting repetitive," Madara said, hand in my face as I crouched in my landing position. It seemed he still had access to at least one of the Rinnegan's abilities, because one of the black chakra receivers formed in his palm and shot me in the face. To my surprise, it didn't pass through me like every other attack did in this form. Instead, it struck with a physical force, like I was still solid. It bounced off, but it was still strong enough to knock me off-balance and send me tumbling off the ogre's head. I reached out, a claw forming and digging into the wooden face. I didn't want to stay for too long, not wanting to find out what Madara could do to me while I clung to _his jutsu_ , but I only needed a moment.

I pulled myself close and placed my hand on the giant's stubby nose. Curls, lines, and esoteric symbols, all wrapped around the kanji for life. I held the image in my mind and forced my will on the world. Two seals bloomed forth, one on the ogre and a nearly-matching one on my palm, and I dropped the instant they were set.

By the time I'd hit the ground, shadows splashing in every direction, the seals were already working. They opened up a channel between the pair of them, pouring life energy from one source and storing it in the other. The ogre, and the dragon it was connected to, began to shrivel up. Supple living wood became brittle dead wood.

Which was a lot easier for Naruto to break out of.

As I reformed into a single human shape again, the wooden dragon shattered into oversized woodchips. As the seal on my palm filled to bursting, the ogre began to burn black. It was ash in minutes.

Naruto dropped out of Kyuubi Mode. He had mentioned earlier that, even with both halves of Kurama-san's chakra, he could only hold the form for a certain amount of time.

I guess I wasn't the only one being careful about how much power I threw around.

"Shikako," Sasuke asked as he drew his chakra sabre, "do you have anything left? Any ideas to seal him you've been holding back?"

Ideas? I'd came up with dozens of ideas to deal with the Edo Tensei. Over half of them turned out to be based on incorrect assumptions about how the jutsu worked and had to be tossed out. Of what was left, most didn't work simply because our opponent was _Madara_. He was leagues above the weight level of the other Edo Tensei summons, and he made most of my ideas useless simply because he could overpower them.

Still, without the Rinnegan to worry about… "Maybe one or two. I'll need to get close."

"Of course," Naruto said, finally gathering enough natural energy to activate Sage Mode. "We'll all go together."

Madara approached, walking calmly through the thick smoke that still rolled off the ogre's smoldering corpse. He was, to no one's surprise, completely unharmed.

Team Seven stood together, three tired teenaged soldiers against the man who gave demons nightmares.

We moved as one unit. Naruto plowed straight forward, as was his nature, drawing the most attention. Sasuke went left and I went right. Madara met us blow for blow, using chakra receivers as melee weapons. Sasuke's sword was coated in lightning chakra and white light streaked behind it with every swing. Naruto's skin was almost impenetrable and his Frog Kata sent shockwaves with each blow. I held back, striking out on occasion but mostly waiting for an opening.

The one I got was not the one I wanted. Madara caught Naruto in a genjutsu that Kurama-san almost immediately broke, but it staggered him enough to leave an opening for Madara send him flying. Sasuke tried to capitalize on this, swinging his blade at Madara's outstretched limb, but Madara's reflexes were too good. He caught the younger Uchiha's blade between his crossed chakra receivers, then pushed them together. The blade shattered between them.

Sasuke didn't have an instant to realize his new situation before Madara stabbed the receivers into his shoulder and leg, firing him back as he did so.

I was already moving when Naruto had hit the ground. I wasn't quick enough to protect Sasuke, but I could finish my jutsu. It was one of the only jutsu Jiraiya had ever taught me.

"Five Elements Seal!" My fire-tipped fingers slammed into Madara's gut, searing the kanji for the five basic chakra elements into his fake clothing.

He staggered momentarily, but I didn't give him the chance to recover. I slammed my other hand into the same spot. "Four Seasons Seal!" Four more kanji appeared, slightly inside the outline of the first seal.

Again. "Three Energies Seal!" Spirit, body and nature joined the other kanji on Madara's skin.

"Duality Seal!" The yin-yang symbol swirled into being, the kanji for dark and light inside the dots.

One more. "Chakra Point Seal!" A single symbol, the kanji for chakra, appeared in the center. I finally ended my assault and let Madara stagger backwards.

It was a mess. Seals overlapped in both destructive and constructive ways. Chakra would flow through one, only to be tugged elsewhere by another. There were areas where two different flows of chakra pushed at each other like a reverse tug-of-war, and others where there was no chakra because several seals kept directing it elsewhere. It looked like the world's most poorly designed fishing net.

But that was the point. Each one of those seals was intended to interfere with a person's chakra system in a different way. Stacking them on top of each other like that, odd over even over odd, only exacerbated their individual effects. Madara may have infinite chakra, but now he'd barely be able to use any of it.

Which meant, hopefully, that I'd be able to hold him with a weaker seal.

I pulled out my bolt of cloth from hammerspace. It was pretty easy to use; put chakra in, point and shoot. Everything else was handled by seals sewn into the fabric itself.

As the cloth wrapped around Madara's body, I finally started to despair at how outmatched and in over our head we were. Flesh faded into wood. I channeled chakra through Jashin's Sliver to activate my life energy sense in order to confirm it. As chakra faded from the wood clone, so too did its life energy. We'd been fighting a fake.

My team! Sasuke was still paralyzed by the chakra receivers he'd been stabbed by. Naruto… Naruto was still on the ground. A wood dragon, smaller than the others but no less capable of draining chakra, had wrapped him up and restrained him.

I moved to help Sasuke first, since he'd need medical attention, when my world became nothing but pain and the faint sound of my teammates calling my name.

Good news, I'd found Madara's real body. Its arm was currently where my stomach was supposed to be, but that was okay. I'd been run through before. I just needed…

Madara grabbed my necklace of stones and pulled it off. "This is where your power's coming from, isn't it?" He tossed it to the side. "You were a formidable foe, but it's over now. The time has come for the Infinite Tsukuyomi, and you're in the way."

I grabbed him, shaking fingers struggling to keep a grip on his blood-slick arm. He ignored me.

"This seal you put on my forehead is impressive, but I've figured out how to beat it." The Caged Phoenix Seal wasn't just skin deep; it sunk in and etched itself onto the sealed person's brain.

He cut chakra to his brain completely. If he'd been a normal, living person that would have killed him. Instead, it just tricked the seal into thinking there wasn't any chakra in his body, so it faded away. The moment his Rinnegan reformed, he began draining my chakra with Preta Path.

"I've fought the Uzumaki clan on their own home ground, but you, Shikako Nara, are the most dangerous seal master I've ever met. I think if you'd had a bit more time to prepare, you could have destroyed my plans for good. You very nearly did so as it is. So I'm going to have to be very thorough with killing you."

God, this guy liked to hear himself speak. I didn't mind, though. It gave me time to act.

I was losing a lot of blood, which was making it very difficult to focus. That made what I was trying to do a whole lot harder than it already was.

I had one last, horribly desperate idea to use on Madara. He was undead, an immortal zombie summoned by the Edo Tensei. No matter what we threw at him, how much damage we did, he just reformed and got back up. But if he were alive.

If he were alive we could kill him.

I knew, in theory, how to bring someone back from the dead. It was a lot like resuscitating someone from near death, only you had to call back their soul as well. It took a whole lot of life energy and at least a little bit of chakra.

It also took time, and I doubted Madara was just going to stay still long enough for me to do my work on him.

Which meant I needed to make something that would do it for me. I needed a seal that I could apply in an instant. And since I didn't have one, I was frantically trying to design one in my head while trying not to pass out from blood and chakra loss.

I cut corners, I took shortcuts, I pretty much winged the entire thing. But. I came up with something.

I still had the life energy I'd drained from the wood ogre, and I poured every drop of it into the rush-job seal I forced into the world and onto Madara.

Light exploded from his form, sending me cartwheeling off his arm. I landed face-first in the dirt, blood flow increasing as soon as there wasn't someone else's limb in the way slowing it down.

I needed my necklace. If I could just turn into shadows, I could regenerate and survive. Where was it…? There!

I crawled, inch by excruciating inch, towards the necklace. My seal continued to work on Madara, a pillar of light reaching into the sky the most obvious sign that it was working.

If I ever finished designing that seal, I'd have to make it less flashy.

I reached the necklace right as the light faded away. It had worked. Madara's skin was a healthy pink, no longer cracked and broken, and I could see his chest move as he took his first mandatory breath in years.

He was still slightly stunned from the process. We had just a few moments before he came to his senses where he was completely vulnerable. If we could kill him now…

Sasuke was still paralyzed and Naruto was still bound. I could barely move. There was no one around to take advantage of Madara's moment of weakness. And yet still, this was our one chance. If he came back, the three of us would die. And then someone else would have to fight him, and we were running out of people who could match his level.

"Kill him!" I cried desperately. "Please! Anyone! Do it now!"

Madara's head went flying. My clone. My Steam Imp chibi-clone that I'd summoned at the beginning of the battle, what felt like days ago, was standing over Madara's body with a blade formed from its arm. Madara's dog was nowhere to be seen. I wasn't sure if it had been unsummoned when Madara had been forced back to life, or if it had just finally collapsed from chakra exhaustion, but I didn't really care. It was over. We'd done it.

And I was still dying.

I tried to summon up the strength to slip into Shadow State, even just in my stomach, but I had nothing. Not a single dreg or scrap of chakra left. All that was left was a little power left over from Jashin's Sliver. I could still sense life energy.

I'd tried, once before, to see what would happen if I fed life energy through my crystals. Gelel's Last Note sang its song for as long as I kept the energy in it, going silent again when I took it back. Jashin's Sliver kept the energy, seemingly devouring it, but permanently increased my sensory range in return. I hadn't tried it with Death's Boon yet, but I didn't have too many other options. I poured all my pain, all my fear, all my desperation into it. I poured hours, days, weeks of life energy into the black and white crystal, alongside a desperate plea for help, from anyone or anything.

Nothing was happening.

Please, don't let me die. I was so close to the end. There were still things to do. People I loved were counting on me. I couldn't die yet! It wasn't right!

"Hey now. Don't say such angry things after asking for help." That voice. My vision was starting to blur, but I could still make out the features of the man who appeared before me. Sunglasses. Skewed headband. Spiky hair. And that _stupid_ smug grin.

"Aoba?" The world seemed to freeze around us.

"The one and only. You look terrible."

I let out a bark of laughter. "You got your sunglasses back." Okay, the blood loss had to be getting to me. I shook the cobwebs out of my brain, doing my best to focus. On Aoba. On all the things I wanted to say to him now that he was here. It pretty much all reduced down to, "I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "You've got nothing to be sorry for."

"But I do!" I replied. "You died because of me. I was mission leader, and I got you killed. If I'd never taken you with…"

"Hey now." Aoba put his hand on my head and ruffled my hair.

When they'd captured him, the last thing he thought before passing out was, 'at least Shikako will be okay.'

When he'd woken up strung to the ceiling and saw me chained up, that's when he despaired.

I was the girl who made Special Jounin faster than Chunin. I was the girl who shook up the entire Logistics and Intelligence Divisions with a smile. I was the girl who casually made friends with Ibiki. I was the girl who saw everything going wrong in the world, then just shrugged and fixed it. Like it was nothing.

If they'd managed to capture _me_ , then there wasn't any hope left.

But there was no blame. At least, none directed at me. I thought he'd hate me for being too weak, for getting caught, for failing to keep him safe. But there was nothing.

"You are my precious comrade, my teammate and my friend, Shikako. I never blamed you for what happened. I never could have." His chakra flowed in to me, filling empty reserves. "Now clean your face and stand up. This world still needs fixing."

He was gone. I did as he told me to, scrubbing tears from my face even as I healed the hole in my stomach.

My clone was still here, unmoving but present. "Go free Naruto," I ordered it. As it did so, I took care of Sasuke.

I'd only just managed to remove the receivers when a voice reached me.

"Well isn't this interesting?"

A black mass broke stone and burst from the ground, wrapping its way around my left side.

"A lost fragment of Mother," it said from right next to my ear. "You should be helping us."

The world went dark.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

I remembered now. She had fought her sons and lost, and in the process was shattered into pieces. The soul is bound to an individual in many ways, and when she was split, each piece took some of her soul with. Her body went into the moon and her chakra went to her son, both tearing off some of her spirit in the process. Her will escaped into the world, a desperate final attempt to save it from her descendants. The final piece, her life energy, had been made useless when she ascended to godhood. As she was split atwain the unimportant piece had been lost, accidentally brushed off the metaphorical table.

She had slipped through dimensions, tumbling about with just enough of a soul to be aware of how lost she was, until at last she stumbled upon a world with people again. It wasn't the world she came from, but there was still life there.

On her own she was nothing. She was light and life and a fraction of a soul, but she burned for no reason and fueled nothing. In theory she could've continued to exist on her own, but it would've been an empty existence. She was life energy, and she craved a body to live in. It didn't take long for her to find one. There was an unborn child in its mother's womb that was about to die. It was old enough to have a soul and young enough that its parents wouldn't have even known it existed yet, but something had gone wrong and it wouldn't survive on its own.

She had reached out and touched it, to shore up its soul and rekindle its fading life energy, but something went wrong. The child had more strength than she'd expected, was still vibrant enough to struggle with her for control. The resulting clash ended with neither the victor, but instead a new soul formed from the mixing of two partial souls. This new soul forgot everything it had been before, but the memories nonetheless remained, buried deep but present. She—I had enough life energy to burn bright for centuries, and might have even done so if not for a sudden, unexpected accident.

I had stood in the land between life and death, a shy, quiet girl before the spirit of dying and rebirth, facing an insane decision. I remembered, for a moment, who I'd been, and the Shinigami gave me a choice: remain as I was and go on to the Pure Land as normal, or return to the world I'd conquered and reunite with the shattered pieces of my soul. I chose the latter.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

I could feel the scattered pieces of my soul coming together. First one, latching on to me and taking over. I struggled against it, but it consisted of the almost-pure willpower of a goddess. It rushed us past my teammates and tore through the barrier I'd set, reuniting us with chakra and body. We were whole again.

But. There was something else.

Body, chakra, will, and life. But life had picked up a passenger. A human child that had been nurtured for decades, and who now thought she could stand against gods.

There was a spilt in our mind and _I_ and _she_ went in separate directions.

I was Shikako, former civilian of New Zealand and current shinobi of Konoha. She was Kaguya, Rabbit Goddess and Mother of Chakra.

We stood together in the place where our minds met, surrounded by a mix of light and shadow and everything in between.

"This isn't right," I said.

"This is necessary," she countered.

"A necessary evil is still an evil."

"Evil? I'm bringing peace to this world. How can that be evil?"

"You're forcing your will on the world. That's not peace, that's fear."

"If that's what it takes." Kaguya waved her hand and our surroundings changed. Images of home appeared; my first home. A world where I'd been a simple lab tech, whose biggest concern was what was for dinner that night, or whether my friend was going to finally ask out that guy she liked. A world of peaceful forests and sprawling hills, where you could live your life without the constant fear of death and war hanging over your head. "You lived in a world where governments pointed thousands of nuclear weapons at each other, enough power to wipe out life across the planet, then agreed not to use them. To keep the peace, because war would destroy both sides, and everyone else in the fallout."

I reached out, enforcing my will and taking control of the surroundings for myself. The images changed. The peaceful city of Auckland turned to bombed-out shells of buildings in Baghdad and other parts of the Middle East. People going about their day-to-day lives became children crying over dead mothers in the streets. Again I changed the images, to older memories of footage from Korea and Vietnam, and at last to a pair of towers, glass and steel that once stretched to the sky, now burning to the ground. A tragedy the whole world had felt.

"Peace through superior firepower _doesn't work_. We tried to scare people away from war, to overwhelm them with power, and we failed. The cornered rat doesn't play by the cat's rules, it fights back. You could win here, you could take all the world's chakra back for yourself and force the people of the world to stop fighting. But sooner or later someone will come along with some new power, who disagrees with you enforcing your will on the world, and they'll get rid of you. Just like your sons did before."

Kaguya changed the surroundings again. Two towers become one, a massive flowering tree stretching into the sky with a single, open bulb atop it. Its roots stretched across the world, through desert and swamp and city and forest, ensnaring everyone in their path. Was this happening right now? Had the jutsu been activated? "That's what the Infinite Tsukuyomi is for. I'll keep everyone safe, living happily in their own perfect world."

"That's not peace!" I shouted. "That's nothing at all! Just an empty, quiet world for you to live in all alone."

She shook her head. "I can see their dreams as they sleep. Their perfect world. When things have settled down at last, I will awaken those whose dreams are most peaceful and have them live with me."

"What right do you have to decide who gets to live free and who sleeps imprisoned forever?"

"The right of strength; the only right that matters."

"Your best reasoning is 'because you can'?! That's where tyrants begin!"

"Is it any different than what your governments do when they lock up criminals, when they get rid of people who go against how their society works?"

"If we lock someone up it's because they broke the law."

"Laws are just rules made by men. They aren't any more or less right than rules I make."

"But governments don't lock up everyone and only let out the acceptable people!"

"Then what would you have me do?!" For the first time since we'd begun, Kaguya seemed angry. "What would you do with all the Madara's and Danzo's of the world? What's your better solution, then?"

If you're so smart, why don't you figure it out?

Naruto had asked me something similar once, so long ago in the Land of Birds. The memory replayed itself around us. I hadn't had an answer for him then.

I still didn't.

"I don't know," I admitted.

"How dare you? You try to lecture me on how to bring peace when you don't know any better than I do!"

"I dare because what you're trying won't work! I may not know what's right, but I do know you're wrong." New memories took over. Naruto, swearing to find the answer I didn't have. The same sunshine-boy talking and knocking sense into Gaara, turning a psychopathic murderer into one of the kindest and most hopeful people in the world. Years later doing much the same again, successfully talking down Nagato and saving the village. Later still, people from half a dozen nations standing together under a single flag, putting aside old wounds and uniting. "But we've already come so close to a better answer. And if anyone can get us the rest of the way, it's Naruto. My answer is to put my faith in him."

The image of Naruto froze around us. Kaguya stared at him for a long time.

"Naruto Uzumaki," she said at last. "He reminds me so much of my son."

Naruto's image shattered, returning our surroundings to formless light and shadow.

"But Hagoromo failed. He tried to bring peace to this world, but people wouldn't cooperate. They turned his gifts into weapons and pointed them at each other. Even now, with all your shinobi working together, all you've managed to do is get everyone to point their weapons in the same direction." Once more light and shadow took new form. She/I/we were fighting Naruto and Sasuke. Sasuke's left eye had morphed into a Rinnegan, and Naruto was followed around by nine Truth-Seeking Orbs. Their hands shone with Hagoromo's power. "If _you_ win here, do you think they'll just put those weapons down? Unless you find someone else to point them at, they'll soon be pointing them at each other again. For you humans, violence is hard-wired into your genes."

"But so is love," I realized as I said it. "Everyone loves, even Danzo and Madara."

"And Madara's love nearly destroyed the world."

I shook my head. "No. He was trying to save it, the same as you. I didn't listen to him as we fought. I should have. Maybe if I had, if I'd heard him, we could have talked him down. I may not know Madara, but I know the stories about him. He helped to make the village system, and he wouldn't have fought as hard for it as he did if he hadn't believed in the First Hokage's dream of peace.

"I failed to listen to him because it was easier not to," I continued. "Peace is a difficult dream, which is why we struggle so hard for it."

"If it's so easy to stop listening that even you can do it, then what hope is there for the rest of the world?"

"Because I'm nothing special. I'm just another person. But I've learned to listen and understand. That's why we're her now, talking instead of fighting. If I can do it, so can anyone."

Kaguya looked at me like I'd grown a second head. "You stand in the presence of a god, not for the first time, but the fourth in this life alone, and you claim to be normal?"

I shook my head. People kept treating me like I was something amazing, but they didn't understand. " _You_ found _me_. I was dying before even being born, and a lost piece of you stumbled across me in time to save me. It was a cosmic coincidence that worked out well for both of us, and everything I've done since then was just because I needed to. And if I need to start listening to people in order to make peace in the world, then that's what I'll do. It won't be easy, but the payoff will be worth far more than the cost."

She was still looking at me weird. "That's it? It has to be done, so you'll do it?"

"Is that any different than what you did?" I asked.

She turned away, finally ceding ground, and spoke barely above a whisper. "All I ever wanted was for those I loved to be safe."

"I know. I _understand_. The same thing has driven me since I arrived in this world."

But…

I remembered when Shikamaru tried to force me into a desk job in research. He wanted to keep me safe too, but I'd just gotten angry at him.

"But you can't force safety on people. If they don't accept it, you'll just be hurting them. That's why you have to talk."

Kaguya was quiet for a long time. I let her think. If this were the Naruto anime, I imagined they'd be playing really sad music and having a bunch of close-up shots of our faces to pass the time.

Eventually, she turned back to me. "Shikako Nara. You are the most amazing normal person I have ever met." Well, I guess if we were compromising, then I would have to take that. "You can try things your way. You can have your chance to fight for peace with love and words. But I'll be watching. If you fail, or if I find an even better way, I'll be back."

There was no chance to respond. Everything disappeared.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

She/I/we had been fighting Naruto and Sasuke in the ice dimension. The world shifted and we were back in the Elemental Nations, just as the sun began to rise above the horizon.

Before the boys could react, chakra poured out of her/my/our body in every direction, gathering nearby and coalescing into eight familiar shapes. The first seven took the shape of the seven Bijuu that had been completely sealed. The last turned into Kaguya herself, who disappeared moments after forming. All that was left inside me was me. Even the fraction of her soul that had been with me through two lives was gone.

Or maybe it had decided to stick around. There was a new crystal on my necklace, shining solid blue, the color chakra glowed when visible. Kaguya's Eye; she said she'd be watching.

In the distance the towering God Tree disappeared, and with it went the roots that ensnared the world.

"Shikako," Naruto asked, "what the heck just happened?"

Relief and weariness bubbled into hysteria and I let out a sharp laugh. "It's over. We did it."

I considered my new crystal. I didn't even need to experiment with it to know what it did. "I'll explain everything soon. But first, there's something I need to see."

I channeled chakra through the stone and the world fell away, a new one taking its place.

I sat atop a skyscraper and just _looked_.

Cars zoomed around corners and people walked the streets. A jet roared by overhead. Seventeen years had passed, and it was like nothing had changed.

I considered, for a moment, getting down and finding my family. It wouldn't be easy after so long, but it would be nice to see them again. Or maybe I'd find my grave; how many people got to visit their own grave? Well, I guess everyone, technically, but most people don't do it twice. Oh, and there was that guy from work I always threatened to haunt if I ever died. Visiting him would be hilarious.

But. I couldn't.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn't stay here. I had friends and family elsewhere as well, and I owed them and loved them too much to leave them behind. And I'd made a promise; I still had to help Naruto bring about world peace.

But, I thought as I slipped back into the space between dimensions, there was always holidays. I could still visit, on occasion. That would be nice.


	9. DoSxLegend of Korra

For this crossover, Nukka is Shikako reincarnated into Aang's time period. It builds off a number of snippets by other authors, but all you really need to know is that Nukka has grown old by the time Korra comes around.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"That's no way to raise a child," she told them.

"She's the Avatar," they insisted.

"That's all the more reason she shouldn't be kept secluded for her entire childhood," she countered.

"She's in danger," they said, and the girl's parents agreed, so there was nothing Nukka could do.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The first time Korra snuck out of the compound, Nukka was not so much surprised that it happened as that the young girl had decided the best way to spend her freedom was to "meet the scary old lady who lives out on the ice".

The sun was low on the horizon when Korra had arrived at her hut, so they'd have to wait until morning to go back safely. Until then, the tot had decided to follow Nukka around as she prepared for nightfall.

"Koda told me you eat children who don't behave and eat their seaweed, but Master Katara said he was just trying to scare me and that you're really nice."

Korra also, Nukka was discovering, had quite the motormouth. Considering she was Aang's reincarnation, Nukka decided that wasn't too surprising.

"Would you like to meet my polar dogs?" Nukka asked, interrupting her guest's stream of speech with a small but mischievous smile. When Korra had signified that yes, she'd love to meet her dogs, Nukka called out at the top of her lungs, "Kiba, Akamaru, Kakashi, Naruto!"

Almost immediately, four long howls cried out in response.

Korra wriggled impatiently in the ensuing silence. She lasted an impressive two and a half minutes before finally asking, "Where are they?"

"They're coming," Nukka answered. "The four of them are sled dogs, but I don't go into town as often as I used to. So nowadays they mostly wander the tundra until I call them in for the night. Ah, here they are now."

Indeed, four small figures on the horizon were slowly taking the shape of polar dogs as they approached. Korra got even more antsy as they approached, but to her credit she stayed put next to Nukka instead of running towards the dogs.

The two in the lead were both as brilliantly white as the snow they plowed through. Close on their tail was a slightly leaner dog with a silvery coat, and trailing in at the end was the smallest of the lot, bearing a reddish-brown coat that stood out starkly against the background and almost looked orange in the light of the setting sun.

Finally they came to a halt mere feet away. Though smaller than their wilder cousins, the polar bear dogs, Nukka's polar dogs still came up to her waist, making them taller than Korra. Despite that, the girl seemed more excited than nervous.

Nukka reached into the bucket she'd carried with her, pulled out a strip of raw meat, and tossed it to the dogs. All four tried to catch it, but it was the silver one who managed to snatch it out of the air. Korra clapped her hands in excitement at the sight.

Nukka tossed another strip, and this time one of the white dogs caught it. She kept this up a few more times before turning to her visitor. "Would you like to try?" she asked.

Korra nodded enthusiastically, already reaching for the bucket. She made a face as her bare hand touched the raw meat. "Eww. What is this?"

"Antarctic rabbit fox, freshly caught this morning." Nukka answered. "Go ahead, toss a piece. Nice and gentle, now."

Disgust was quickly replaced by uncontrollable giggles when the brown-furred dog snapped up the strip she tossed.

They continued like that, alternating between the two of them as they fed the dogs until Nukka decided they'd had enough. "Come here and I'll introduce you," Nukka said, waving Korra closer. The brown dog was first. "Hold out the back of your hand so he can sniff it."

Korra found herself giggling again as the polar dog forewent smelling her in favor of trying to lick up whatever meat juices were still on her fingers.

"This is Naruto," Nukka said. "He was the runt of his litter, but he does alright for himself now. He just needed a little extra attention when he was a pup." One of the white dogs padded closer and buried his snout in Korra's hair, kicking her gigglefit into overdrive. "That's Kiba. The other white one's Akamaru." Korra held her other hand out for Akamaru to smell, and he did so politely. The last of the four apparently decided not to bother with the new human and flopped down on the ground. "Lazybutt over there is Kakashi. He thinks he's cooler than he actually is." As if he could understand her, Kakashi proceeded to let out an indignant-sounding huff.

Nukka watched quietly as Korra played with her dogs. She had been worried she'd have to teach the girl how to properly treat an animal, to explain that they were living creatures and not toys, but it seemed she already knew that. Perhaps being good with animals was one of the things that carried over between Avatar reincarnations. It would certainly explain why so many Avatars ended up with animal companions.

When at last it finally started to get too dark to see, Nukka shuffled everyone indoors. Korra had managed to crawl on top of Kiba's back, and he seemed perfectly happy to let her ride him as they went inside.

Dinner consisted of rabbit fox stew served with kale biscuits. Nukka pretended not to notice when Korra fished out the sea prunes and slipped them to Naruto. The leftovers were placed outside in the snow in an airtight pot.

"Do you think I could have a polar dog someday?" Korra sleepily mumbled as Nukka tucked her in to bed. She didn't usually entertain guests, let alone overnighters, so Nukka didn't have a guest bed to put her in. But Korra was small enough and young enough that she could share Nukka's bed for one night.

"Maybe," was the only answer Nukka could give. "Avatars often find animal companions to aid them throughout their lives. Maybe yours will be a polar dog."

"I hope so," Korra said, and then she was asleep.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Morning found Nukka alone in bed. Sometime during the night, Korra had crawled free and curled up with the dogs on the floor. Kakashi had completely wrapped himself around her, with the other three taking up protective positions around him. Nukka endeavored not to wake them as she set about rekindling the fireplace and reheating the previous night's leftovers for breakfast.

As the stew heated up, Nukka slipped outside and began stretching. Moments later, however, she discovered she hadn't been as quiet as she'd intended.

"What are you doing?" Korra asked from the doorway, sleepily rubbing her eyes.

"My morning routine," Nukka answered. "It keeps these old joints of mine loose and strong."

The tundra was silent save for the shuffling of the little girl as Korra watched Nukka move between various different poses. "Would you like to join me?" Nukka finally asked.

"Hmm, okay. What do I do?" Korra answered.

"Come stand next to me and I'll show you." She did. "There's a song that goes along with it, to help you remember. It goes, 'I woke up in the morning and saw the mountain there…'" Impressively for a five-year-old, Korra managed to make it through the first two verses of the workout before plopping onto the ground halfway through the third. Nukka couldn't do the whole thing herself anymore, and so she let off after the fifth verse.

"Let's go back inside. Breakfast should be warm by now." Indeed it was, so Nukka spooned the last of the stew into two bowls. "Once we've ate, we'll set off to get you back to your parents. Unfortunately, we'll have to walk. My sled needs repairs right now since _someone_ ," she nudged Kiba with her foot, "got a little excited when an arctic hamster paid us a visit the other day and broke part of it."

Korra did her best not to choke on her stew as she laughed at the mental image.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Four dogs, an old lady and a little girl walked across ice and snow in the morning sunlight. They weren't far enough south to have to deal with things like midnight sun, but even still the sun wouldn't get far above the horizon for a couple more months.

"Hey Miss?" Korra asked, trailing slightly behind.

"You can call me Nukka," Nukka replied.

"Nukka, how come you don't leave any footprints in the snow when you walk?"

Nukka smirked. "That's because I'm a ninja."

"Oh."

They continued walking in silence.

"What's a ninja?"

"It's someone who's really good at using weapons and being sneaky."

"Oh."

Silence fell once more. A colony of otter penguins could faintly be heard in the distance.

"Can you teach me?"

Nukka looked back at her companion. Korra was staring at her with an intensely curious gaze.

"Sure," Nukka answered. "Come here and I'll show you."

Four hours later, when the group finally reached the White Lotus compound, Korra had just about figured out how to place her foot down to cause the smallest impact and make the least sound. "Keep practicing," Nukka told her, "and I'll show you the rest of the technique some other time."

"You'll come visit me, then?" Korra asked, hope shining in her eyes.

"Of course," Nukka assured her. She was quite positive that if she didn't visit Korra, then Korra would keep visiting her. The White Lotus already had enough reasons to dislike Nukka, so she was wont to give them another. "For right now, I imagine your parents are worried sick about you. Best not keep them waiting."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"If she's expected to fight, she should learn more than just the bending arts," Nukka told them.

"The Avatar is taught to bend all four elements. Training her to use weapons goes against tradition," they answered.

"So does starting her training at age five. She _wants_ to learn this," Nukka countered.

"She's a little girl, what she wants is unimportant," they declared.

"What she wants is important _because_ she's a little girl. You've already stolen enough of her childhood; can you not give her this one thing she wants?" Nukka nearly shouted.

"There are many bending styles that incorporate weapons," Katara said calmly. "Aang himself often used a staff when fighting." And finally they listened.

Nukka got one day a week to teach Korra how to wield a weapon. Not enough time to master even one style, but that was fine. Nukka didn't consider herself to be a master of any particular weapon. Once a week for a decade was enough time to get Korra familiar with every weapon Nukka knew how to use, and maybe she'd find one in that time that she preferred.

Katara took her aside afterwards. Her face and voice were calm, but anger churned in her eyes like Nukka hadn't seen since before their brother had died.

"The war is over, Nukka. Korra isn't going to grow up to be a soldier."

She was like the ocean. Calm on the surface, but just beneath the waters churned, ready to turn on you in a moment's notice.

Every battle they'd ever fought together flashed before Nukka's eyes.

"War or no war," Nukka told her sister, "Korra's the Avatar. She'll spend her entire life fighting one thing or another. I just want her to be prepared for that."

And just like that the anger was gone, replaced by tired concern. "We ended a war, put the world back together, and founded a new city-state based on equality for all. Is it too much to ask for a little peace? Just for a generation?"

"If only the world were kind," Nukka commiserated.

"Don't you go teaching her to think like that now," Katara scolded. "That's just something us old fogies are supposed to do." She walked off, throwing her final comment over her shoulder. "Weapons only, no cynicism allowed."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Nukka taught Korra more than just how to use weapons. She taught her how to minimize her presence in every way, from where and how to place her foot when walking, to muffling her scent and every sound she made with her chi. From blending in to the darkness of night to hiding in plain sight. She even helped Korra figure out how to safely manipulate her body heat with firebending.

Tonraq would take Korra fishing sometimes, when they both had days off from training and work, and Korra sometimes helped Senna cook her meals. But it was Nukka who taught her how to hunt, clean, and cook every animal that lived in the South Pole with only a knife and whatever could be scavenged from the surroundings.

When Korra snuck out one night, only to return later with a polar bear dog she'd named Naga, it was Nukka who showed the girl how to train her. She was also the one who made her saddle, once Naga had grown big enough to ride.

Nukka taught Korra to look underneath the underneath, to question and prod until she'd learned the truth. It wasn't an easy lesson to teach while stuck in a compound, but Nukka set up the foundation so that Korra would figure the rest out once she entered the real world.

When Korra turned 14 and Tonraq refused to take her ice dodging, it was Nukka who she snuck out to visit, and Nukka who took her out against her parents' wishes. Nukka was pretty sure Tonraq wanted to kill her when he found out, or at least fire her, but Katara managed to talk him down.

And so it was, that when Korra set off to Republic City to find her airbending teacher, she did so with a pair of hand-carved whale-bone knuckle knives tucked into her bag. A farewell gift from a teacher who taught her to forge her own path as the Avatar, and not just follow the legacy of the ones who came before her.


End file.
